Obvious Child

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Gillian Robespierre/Starring: Jenny Slate, Gaby Hoffman, Jake Lacy and Richard Kind

Some former Saturday Night Live alumni bear the stigma of leaving the show without ever having the opportunity to shine but later they manage to blossom on the stage, T.V. or film. Jenny Slate, a one-time SNL alumnus, may join the likes of Chris Rock and Sarah Silverman--other alumni who succeeded nicely after undistinguished stints on the show--by establishing her own comedic credentials with the feature Obvious Child.

Slate plays Donna Stern, a woman in her twenties who does stand-up comedy in a local club while also holding down a job in a bookstore that is in its death throes. Her boyfriend has just dumped her for another woman and she medicates herself with excessive drinking. While not bemoaning her relationship status with her roommate and friend Nellie (Gaby Hoffman), she seeks moral support from her divorced parents; father Jacob Stern (Richard Kind) and mother Nancy (Polly Draper).

Early on I felt uneasy; thinking the film was going to be one more Lena Dunham-like, navel-ogling, mopy, comedy-drama with a character who can't seem to find Mr. Decent. The story mercifully veered from the well-worn into the unexpected.

Donna meets a handsome, twenty-something named Max (Jake Lacy), whose nice blandness seems to be a polar extreme to Donna's smart, hip, city-wit. But after a night of one-too-many, the two find themselves lying next to one another in bed the next morning. Donna, still smarting from her break-up and mildly stalking her ex, resists Max; avoiding him and ignoring his calls.

The story takes a significant turn when Donna learns she is pregnant with Max's child. I thought I could accurately plot the rest of the film from this point. But unlike Diablo Cody's Juno, with her character making a seemingly provocative but actually an audience-pleasing choice, Obvious Child blazes a more difficult, more controversial course by showing us a character who is resolute but emotionally unsure in her decision to have an abortion. It is all the more difficult when Max's determined pursuit of Donna leaves her feeling the guilt of removing him from the decision.

It's to first feature director Gillian Robespierre's credit that the film doesn't degenerate into predictable, ABC Family-like drama but maintains its sharp humor, sometimes subversively so. One example is some Donna/Nellie repartee that includes some jokes about abortion, which are funny without trivializing the issue.

I particularly liked the scene where Donna confides in her mother Nancy, with whom she has had a tempestuous relationship. Providing solace and some solidarity, Nancy relates her own experience with abortion in the 60s', which sheds light on a darker time when a woman had more rigid legal and societal obstacles (which haven't vanished altogether).

Jenny Slate is quite amusing and does much with her character while the supporting cast members like Gaby Hoffman, Gabe Liedman and David Cross offer their own funny witticisms and performances to keep the movie humming. Jake Lacy is the film's nice, white-toasty, almost impossibly nice and supportive love-interest but he seems plausibly so and manages to even exude a subtle magnetism.

Obvious Child is a film whose charms take a while to emerge and when they do, they satisfy. For Robespierre and Slate, it is a fine start to what I hope will be a series of fruitful collaborations.