WHAT'S ON
Obvious Child
(tbc) 83mins
★★★✩✩
Obvious Child opens with scatty and scatological stand-up Donna Stern (Jenny Slate) ruminating on gussets and female flatulence.
From this point the film rarely strays too far north from this ground zero which is perhaps just as well because Donna's life, just like her underwear, is about to get very messy and very gynaecological.
"What is wrong with me," declares this Jewish Bridget Jones, quaffing wine, drunk-dialling her ex and over-sharing on stage.
But she's honest, likeable and with a self-destructive urge to show'n'tell the awkward moments, so it's little wonder that tidy business student Max (Jake Lacy), the self-deprecating square-with-the-hair, can't look away.
That their one-night-stand ends with her pregnancy shifts Gillian Robespierre's patter-rich romcom out of reach of its early indulgences and into darker, more interesting, territory.
Donna books an appointment at an abortion clinic and, in the meantime, turns to her back-up team. That's gal pal Nellie (Gaby Hoffman), dad Jacob (Richard Kind) and mum Nancy (Polly Draper) who defies expectations to show herself to be a real trooper. Gay b.f. Joey (Gabe Liedman) is waspish, former suitor Sam (David Cross) is creepy.
Donna keeps her secret from the over-keen Max for as long as possible but he finds out from the inveterate blabbermouth in the least surprising, most cinematically fitting, way.
Their small but touching journey from that moment, through the will-she-won't-she to the denouement is about as far from a fart gag as it's possible to get.
Flawed, yes, and over-reliant on Slate's impish charm, but this is a readily watchable film that plays right to the core vote of the "Girls" generation.
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