It\u2019s a question still casually and routinely asked to couples everywhere regardless of familiarity, one that many fear and some feel actively offended by: are you guys gonna have kids?<\/p>\n
Despite living in an age where we\u2019re supposedly more accepting of people who make choices that don\u2019t conform to whatever dusty old standards our parents and their parents had to live by, there\u2019s still an odd regressive judgment attached to those who dare to say no or even maybe. There\u2019s the sad tilt of the head and maybe a \u201cbut you\u2019d make such great parents\u201d on top, as if either would make a difference to one of life\u2019s biggest decisions. It\u2019s a question that writer-director Lauren Miller Rogen knows all too well<\/a> and as the wife of Seth Rogen<\/a>, it\u2019s one that has an answer that immediately becomes a headline<\/a>.<\/p>\n She has used this frustration to fuel Babies, a mostly likable if a little run-of-the-mill comedy about a couple faced with similarly intrusive questioning. She has recruited her husband and paired him with Anna Kendrick<\/a>, the pair playing the Los Angeles couple of Aaron and Annie. We meet them at a pool party with friends that, as of recent years, has turned into more of a kids\u2019 party. Annie\u2019s voiceover, a rather lazy and inconsistently used device that the film could do without, informs us that she is almost constantly weighing up the pros and cons, laid out as we see her moon after a cute kid before expressing repulsion at them another having a tantrum. It\u2019s creating a gap with Aaron\u2019s friends (who don\u2019t have as much time as he has to delve into the Bosch universe, one of the script\u2019s funnier jokes), but more so with Annie\u2019s friends Becky and Eliza, played by Issa Rae<\/a> and Kate Berlant<\/a>, whose lives are constricting, offering less space for her. The decision is both helped and hindered by Aaron\u2019s easygoing nature, a loving husband but one who doesn\u2019t seem to care either way, allowing her to make the choice.<\/p>\n When Eliza leaves her husband (Dan Stevens<\/a>) she invites herself, with daughter Eve (a child Annie actually likes), to stay with Annie and Aaron until they can find a better solution. \u201cHaving a kid in the house will push us in a direction,\u201d Annie tells Aaron \u2013 although it\u2019s one of many occasions when we can feel Miller Rogen telling us too<\/a>, as if she doesn\u2019t trust her ability to just show us (too many conversations in the film feel like they have been had for the first time, as if the characters didn\u2019t exist before someone yelled \u201caction\u201d). The couple are then forced, by the film, to see whether having a child around the house will push them closer to or further away the the idea of parenthood.<\/p>\n As Annie and Aaron wrestle with whether or not to parent, Miller Rogen also wrestles what kind of film she wants to be making. There\u2019s an amiable shagginess to certain scenes (it was described as a \u201changout\u201d movie in its premiere introduction), but at other times, one can feel a strain to keep the film within a familiar, formulaic, audience-pleasing structure with so many characters and subplots that it almost feels like an extended sitcom pilot. (Her last film as director, 2018\u2019s unremarkable Kristen Bell comedy Like Father<\/a>, felt very much like one.) There\u2019s also David Strathairn as Annie\u2019s father dealing with his wife\u2019s dementia, Ed Helms as a sleazy investor to a gallery that Annie and Becky want to open, and brief cameos from Sharon Stone and Ashley Park. There are obvious echoes of Judd Apatow<\/a>, with Rogen helping to amplify, but his finest films balanced so much and so well that one didn\u2019t picture him plotting everything out with quite so much flashcards-on-a-corkboard precision.<\/p>\n The bigger laughs don\u2019t always land (a failed date between Stone and Strathairn is a missed opportunity, while there are many unsuccessful poop jokes) but some of the smaller, more richly observed moments do, as Annie grapples with the shifting world around her and how your long-term friends changing their priorities shouldn\u2019t affect your own. There is a scene at a baby shower when she finally reaches her limit with the smug cliches that come from the \u201cyou wouldn\u2019t understand\u201d type of mother that many non-parents will find incredibly satisfying to watch. It\u2019s refreshing to see a film that isn\u2019t afraid to comfort those who are often made to feel othered<\/a> simply for not wanting children<\/a> without feeling like an attack on those who do.<\/p>\n