thoughts on Obvious Child (spoilers)

Jenny Slate stars as Donna Stern, a comedian who, in the span of a few days, gets dumped (her boyfriend tells her that he has been sleeping with a friend of hers) and learns that the bookstore she has worked at for five years is closing down.  In the aftermath of this, she has drunken sex with a guy she meets following a particularly bad stand-up comedy performance.  They probably do not use a condom (we are shown some drunken fumbling with one; she later tells a friend that she remembers seeing a condom, but she isn't sure "what it did").  A few weeks later, she learns that she is pregnant.  She decides to get an abortion.  Though she had expected the drunken sex to be a one-night stand, she keeps running into the guy (Max, played by Jake Lacy), and he seems really sweet.  She struggles with whether to tell him about the pregnancy and upcoming abortion, then how to tell him.  Her best friend, Nellie (Gaby Hoffman), and her mom (Polly Draper) provide emotional support.

This is not the type of movie where characters make epic speeches or have huge epiphanies or get into shouting matches, or where dramatic music plays on the soundtrack underscoring how we're supposed to feel.  We're just invited into Donna's life for a few weeks and shown how she deals with things.  I cringed when she left drunken messages on her ex's answering machine, as well as when she and Max fumbled with, but probably did not use, a condom.  I was touched by a scene in which Donna climbs into bed with her mom.  I appreciated that Max showed up with flowers on the morning of her abortion even though she wound up breaking the news to him onstage as part of her stand-up comedy routine; I liked that he was able to recognize that regardless of how she told him, the most important thing was that he be there for her.  I laughed at some of the dialogue, even though it included a few too many fart jokes for my taste.  I was glad that Donna seemed to have a lot of really kind and supportive people in her life. 

Because the film is missing the aforementioned epic speeches and huge epiphanies and dramatic music playing on the soundtrack, we are left to merely observe.  We may or may not always like or approve of what we are seeing in front of us.  The point is that we can have an opinion about what happens in Donna's life, but we don't get to have a say.