“When are you having kids?”
It’s a question any long-term couple gets. The longer you’ve been together, the more frequently that query comes up. For Annie (Anna Kendrick) and Aaron (Seth Rogen), it is the central question in Lauren Miller Rogen’s delightful Los Angeles-set comedy, Babies.
The happy couple have been together for 17 years. Their close friends are in various stages of parenting, ranging from newborns to teenagers, and they begin to interrogate their own desires to have—or not have—kids of their own. Their answer has always been, “Well, maybe.” Annie and Aaron get a crash course in parenting when friend Eliza (Kate Berlant) splits from her husband, Luke (Dan Stevens), and temporarily moves into their home with their young daughter, Eve. Getting a close-up view of the good and bad sides of parenting, Annie and Aaron aim to ultimately answer the question of whether they want to become parents themselves. What might seem like a cheesy sitcom plot belies a real emotional exploration of what it means to love and parent through life’s highs and lows.
Rarely do childfree adult couples get such examined depth in family comedies. Instead, they’re often characterized as party animals or, worse, freaks. Here, Annie and Aaron are disturbingly normal, which shouldn’t surprise you. Babies is written and directed by Miller Rogen, who, along with real-life husband Rogen, has been vocal about choosing not to have children. Their real-life experiences are channeled into this script in enlightening, deep and funny ways. As someone who also chose to be childfree, it is incredibly refreshing to see the decision to parent (or not) explored in such an articulate, layered way.
In Babies, neither having kids nor not having kids is presented as the “right” choice. Both are simply a choice.
Though the couple like kids and dote on the ones in their lives, there are myriad reasons for them not to want their own. For Annie, she has career ambitions to launch a gallery with her friend Becky (Issa Rae), while facing uncertainty with her own mother as she slowly disappears behind Alzheimer’s. Miller Rogen’s script shows great tenderness and understanding of life’s challenges, especially when you’re trying to care for elderly parents and babies at the same time.
Annie’s deep introspection comes through as she anxiously narrates her thoughts, but Miller Rogen balances the character’s wit and humour as she struggles to answer that age-old question. As she explores her options and thoughts, Babies gives plenty of lightness and laughs, and not all of them come at the expense of kids or parenting. Here, everyone is in on the joke, not the butt of it. The pleasures of being childfree are illustrated through impromptu trips for ice cream and afternoon movies, but so too are the joys of parenting. And in the end, none of the adults in the movie really have anything figured out.
For a movie about deciding whether to have children, Babies is ultimately more interested in the messiness of figuring out what makes a life feel like your own.
Kendrick is delightful as Annie. Buoyed by Rogen and an equally strong ensemble cast, Babies will feel true-to-life for many Millennials. The storyline slightly falters with a subplot about Annie’s dad (David Strathairn) venturing into online dating that doesn’t feel quite as formed as the central plot. It does, however, give us a great but inconsequential cameo by Sharon Stone. But it doesn’t really detract from Babies’ overall strengths. Aside from the script, another of the film’s positives lies in cinematographer Edu Grau’s sun-soaked LA scenes. The city and the characters in it feel warm and inviting, as does Annie and Aaron’s home, filled with mid-century modern design and cool stuff that can only exist without the reach of sticky little fingers. Picture-perfect parties and baby showers are punctuated by Annie’s often sarcastic inner monologue, which points out the cracks in the happy facades.
Ultimately, Babies finds its strength in refusing to make the question of parenthood a simple one. Annie and Aaron’s uncertainty feels less like a problem to be solved than a reality to be lived with, and the film allows them to sit with that uncertainty while considering what they actually want for their lives. In a story built around a question that couples are so often expected to answer, Babies makes room for the possibility that there isn’t one universal answer.
