Still, as brave as “Obvious Child” is, I wouldn’t describe its heroine, for all her admirable pluck and onstage audacity, as courageous, exactly. She doesn’t have to face down any nasty anti-choice protesters, let alone contend with disapproving parents. Apart from some minor financial anxiety — she’s unemployed and the abortion costs $500 — her path to a trauma-free abortion is smooth. For Donna, abortion is a rueful rite of passage; a kind of bat mitzvah that transforms the baby-voiced party girl into a (slightly) more sober young woman. Halfway through the movie, her mother reveals that she had an abortion as a young woman, too.
Despite the fact that pro-choice groups are helping to publicize it, “Obvious Child” isn’t really an “issue” movie. It doesn’t purport to speak for all women or represent all abortion experiences. It’s a cheeky, subversive romantic comedy: Boy meets girl; boy and girl sleep together; girl gets abortion; boy and girl begin dating. Much like its lead actors, it’s funny and sweet and endearing. The fact that it’s socially useful in destigmatizing abortion and normalizing women’s lives feels almost incidental.
Seven years ago, two other terrific comedies, Judd Apatow’s “Knocked Up” and Jason Reitman’s “Juno,” were criticized by some commentators who wondered why the films’ pregnant protagonists — a single, professionally successful 20-something in Apatow’s film and an overwhelmed teenager in Reitman’s — were so quick to dismiss abortion as an option. Many defended the characters’ choices on dramatic grounds, claiming that if they hadn’t chosen to continue their pregnancies, there wouldn’t have been a movie. With “Obvious Child,” director Gillian Robespierre demonstrates that you can, in fact, sustain enough drama and narrative tension to make a compelling comedy about abortion. It’s no surprise that “Obvious Child,” unlike “Knocked Up” and “Juno,” is the product of an all-female team: its writers, director and star are women. Many men, especially fathers, know something about pregnancy; few know how women experience abortion.
Article source: http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/6/abotion-comedy-obviouschild.html