+ Best Independent Movie of the Year
 |
| Lead Jenny Slate in front of a deliciously pink background on this poster for Gillian Robespierre's Obvious Child |
Our heroine is a stand-up comedian at a local Brooklyn club, who also works in a bookstore, which is closing, just as her boyfriend has also dumped her. So she sleeps with a handsome stranger ...
Obvious Child is the feature debut for writer-director Gillian Robespierre, based on her own same-titled 2009 short. It's fueled by an incredibly funny script, which the hysterically funny Jenny Slate (The Lorax (2012)), a comical natural talent, breathes wonderful life into. There's also several fine supporting performances: From Richard Kind (Inside Out (2015)) as her father, Polly Draper (Our Idiot Brother (2011) as her mother, Gabe Liedman (Brooklyn Nine-Nine (2015), TV-series) as her gay friend, Gaby Hoffmann (Wild (2014)) as her girlfriend and Jake Lacy (Carol (2015)) as her new romance, who is almost unearthly sweet.
SPOILER You might feel ambiguous about seeing these two nice people, a great, blossoming couple, decide to go get an abortion. - But Obvious Child still somehow remains among the warmest, sweetest and certainly funniest romcoms in a long while. - Don't cheat yourself of this experience!
Interesting fact: Robespierre devised the film (and the short it's based on) on her frustration about the "misrepresentation of women on screen when it came to unplanned pregnancy", citing films such as Juno (2007), Knocked Up (2007) and Waitress (2007) as her target.
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Watch the trailer for the film here
Cost: Unknown
Box office: 3.3 mil. $
= Uncertainty
[Obvious Child was undoubtedly made on a small budget, perhaps around 1 mil. $, in which case it should be counted as a box office success. But without knowing for sure, we can't call it. It was in North American release for 18 weeks, topping at 196 screens, grossing 3.1 mil. $ (93.9 % of the total gross). It was released in only two other markets, the UK (which, with 197k $, made up nearly all the rest of the gross) and New Zealand. Obvious Child is certified fresh at 89 % with a 7.3 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Obvious Child?
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