Tag Archives: Michelle Buteau

Hot Mamas

Babes

by Hope Madden

Bobby Hill makes a movie. I think we always knew he was a feminist.

Director Pamela Adlon, longtime actor and brilliant voice actor (winning an Emmy for her work on King of the Hill), helms her first feature with Babes, the tale of two of lifelong best friends grappling with the sloppy tensions motherhood can put on a friendship.

Adlon works with a script by co-star Ilana Glazer and Josh Rabinowitz, who wrote together on Glazer’s breakout sitcom Broad City, so you can guess what to expect: raunchy hilarity based in shameless womanhood.

Yes, please.

This is Glazer’s sweet spot. She’s plays Eden, whose free spirit is met with increasingly harried laughs by Michelle Buteau (Survival of the Thickest). Buteau’s Dawn has just given birth to her second child and realizes that it only gets harder. Everything. All things. Harder.

Just when Dawn could use her delightfully odd bestie’s help, Eden finds herself pregnant, quickly becoming just another bottomless source of need.

Applause to Babes for doing more than checking off boxes: premise, catalyst, etc. Dawn’s pregnancy mishap is actually among the most endearing plot points in a surprisingly lovely, if deeply gross, film.

The raucous irresponsibility that fueled Broad City enlivens Babes as well, but there’s more to this story than body fluids and lady parts. Glazer and Buteau share a charming, lived-in chemistry that enriches their sharp comic timing and riotous delivery.

They’re not alone. Delightful supporting turns from Hasan Minhaj, Stephen James and John Carroll Lynch add depth to situations, developing dimensional characters we become invested in.

Childhood best friendship rarely really survives adulthood. Babes wonders whether it can, with the right mix of forgiveness and need, distance and support, breast milk and feces. Glazer’s irreverent humor loses none of its edge, but there’s now more depth and humanity. The laughs come early and often, but Babes delivers a lot of heart as well.

Kissing to Be Clever

Crush

by George Wolf

Don’t worry, parents, the high schoolers in Hulu’s Crush don’t play Seven Minutes in Heaven anymore.

“That perpetuates a Christian narrative. We’re playing Seven Minutes in a Hotel Bathroom.”

Noted. So while the hormones here are as active as ever, the cage they’re raging in is awash in idealized hipness, as a trio of newbie filmmakers craft a feature debut full of genuine sweetness and winning humor.

Paige (Rowan Blanchard from TV’s Snowpiercer) is a Junior at Miller High, and being gay is the least of her drama right now. She’s struggling with the application to Cal Arts – her dream school – and she can’t find the courage to make a move on Gabby (Isabella Ferreira) – her dream girl.

That’s not all. Miller’s Ren Fest-loving principal (Michelle Buteau – a hoot) thinks Paige is behind the series of artful school vandalism murals signed by the mysterious “King Pun.” To avoid suspension, Paige agrees to become extracurricular active (Gabby runs track, so…) and work on outing the real vandal (king pun intended).

But just when it seems Gabby is interested, Paige can’t quit thinking about another track teammate (Auli’i Cravalho, voice of Moana) who never seemed like her type.

Until now.

Director Sammi Cohen invites us into an upper-middle-class teenage dream where kids are accepted and their choices are trusted. None of the stakes or the heartbreaks feel particularly dramatic, but the film itself finds resonance in being purposefully sanitized.

Screenwriters Kirsten King and Casey Rackham develop a nice groove that is self-aware without any awkward pandering to the teen audience. There are plenty of wink-winks to the formula they’re upending, and while the film is never as authentically sexual as last year’s Plan B, the occasional bawdy zinger does land.

Both Blanchard and Cravalho are irresistible charmers, with scene-stealing honors split between Megan Mullaly as Paige’s Mom (“Don’t take edibles before school, we talked about this”) and Aasif Mandvi as the track coach (“I know 60 percent of you are queer!”)

Wait, are Mom and Coach talking dirty to each other? OMGLOL!

Underneath all the horniness is a feel-good formula that may remind you of last year’s Oscar-winning CODA. But the emphasis in Crush showcases a high school world where the queer kids drive that formula. The film itself becomes a 90-minute safe space, where kids can just stress about their crushes instead of the reaction to whatever gender they may be crushing on.