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Obvious Child was one of the films I unfortunately let slip past me during both Sundance and SXSW this year. Luckily, the comedy written and directed by Gillian Robespierre found distribution from A24, allowing me the chance to rectify this error. The film is a dramatic comedy starring Jenny Slate, a stand-up comedian and former SNL actress, as Donna Stern, a stand-up comedian herself who finds herself down on her luck close to Valentine’s Day following a break-up, firing, and an unforeseen pregnancy. However, when a new guy (The Office‘s Jake Lacy) enters her life, she finds things slowly moving on an upswing.
Based on this trailer, I can see people making comparisons to other noteworthy contemporary actresses/comedians (Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Kristen Wiig specifically), but I think Slate’s cut from a different cloth from them. I’m not familiar with Slate’s work, but if her Obvious Child character Donna Stern is drawn directly from Slate’s personality and humor, I definitely would not mind seeing more. Obvious Child also doesn’t appear to be caught in the trappings of other similar films, instead leaning more towards the independent, “everything might not end up rainbows and sunshine, and that’s okay” route, and if so… I’m game.
We’ll all find out where on the comedy spectrum Obvious Child falls on when it hits theaters on June 6th.