Obvious Child **½ (R) Donna (Jenny Slate) is an endearingly funny, self-conscious, insecure New Yorker, working days at an ill-fated used bookstore, prepping for her regular standup gigs as a hole-in-the-wall club for the undiscovered. Her life is her material, with no boundaries, airing details about everything from her body parts (and their exudates) to her boyfriend hoping for the intersection of truth and comedy while baring her soul. That alienates her guy, triggering a depression dive that her gay pals (Gaby Hoffman, Gabe Liedman) and divorced parents (Richard Kind, Polly Draper) can barely dent. A one-night stand with a farm-fresh fellow (Jake Lacy) who seems way too mainstream for her Brooklyn hipster milieu ends in pregnancy. The rest of this low-key indie dramedy is mainly what she’ll do about it, including whether to even tell the father.
The dialog - particularly Donna’s on- and off-stage jokes - is surprisingly bawdy, considering her innocent demeanor. She’s something of a Sarah Silverman wannabe without ever declaring herself as such. The openness of her act is often more shocking than amusing, especially while wallowing in her grief over being dumped. Gillian Robespierre’s feature debut as both writer and director is fairly impressive, but Slate’s sweet vulnerability is the real emotional driver of this engine. The film is an extension of their 2009 collaboration on a short using this title and premise.
The plot rambles a bit in an apparent prioritizing of setting and mood over the story and its cast. Kind and Draper deserved more of a chance to contribute. Slate’s future may lie in gal-pal supporting roles, in the fine comic tradition of character actors like Joan Cusack, Kathryn Hahn or Judy Greer, who invariably brighten any of their movies, no matter how brief their time upon the screen. (6/27/14)