Above: "Obvious" star Jenny Slate
Movies, in one way or another,
are often about love. But that doesn’t
just mean they’re about two characters finding a fairy tale romance—sometimes,
the real romance is between you, the audience member, and the hero or heroine
of the piece. After all, when a film
lets you live in a character’s world for a little while, it also helps you get
to know their quirks, habits, and passions, giving you the kind of intimate
knowledge that can’t help but make you feel affectionate.
That’s how I feel about twenty-something standup comedian
Donna Stern (Jenny Slate) of “Obvious Child.”
The first time we see her, she’s onstage at a club, doing a goofy
routine that’s mostly about making fun of her private parts. It’s not especially entertaining, yet there’s
something instantly loveable about Donna.
Ms. Slate, with her nasally-cute voice and billowing dark hair is screwball
comedy-wild yet never out of control—she revels in Donna’s witticisms, even as
she subtly telegraphs the character’s vulnerabilities.
Then the bad times roll.
Dumped by her sleazy boyfriend Ryan (Paul Briganti), Donna starts
downing full glasses of wine (the movie never really acknowledges the fact that
she’s a budding alcoholic) and insulting her audiences. “You can’t have your money back because it’s
free,” she drawls during one particularly static set.
During these scenes, I felt myself bristling against
“Obvious Child.” It was clear that Donna
was depressed (there’s a funny and painful scene where she waits outside Ryan’s
apartment, then hurls a coffee cup aside when he appears), but the movie seemed
content to package its emotions in “clever” one liners. Traces of actual despair? Not part of the routine.
Yet then Donna meets Max (Jake Lacy). Tall and neatly dressed in a blue shirt, he
looks like an absolute straight arrow. But
there’s something between him and Donna.
They make fun of each other’s shoes (“They’re, like, made of angels,”
Donna says of her Crocs), joke about farting, and have one raucous, drunken
night of sex. Then afterwards, there’s a
sweet scene where Max finds Donna sitting in a cardboard box and says he wants
“to take her out on a proper date.” And
whenever he looks at her, he smiles happily, as if just being near her is
enough to live off of.
I know how he feels.
How can you not love Donna?
There’s something wonderful about her, from the way she crawls into bed
with her mother to the absurdly gigantic white scarf that she wears when it’s
cold outside. Ms. Slate, having been a
member of the “SNL” gang, already knows how to play a standup goddess. But she makes Donna more than a punch line
machine—in between cracking wise, she finds a confident, scared, foul-mouthed,
awkward, loving, and defiant young woman who speaks passionately and wittily from
her heart.
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