Film Review: UNPREGNANT (2020): The Unplanned Pregnancy Story Gets an Absurd Teen Comedy Twist

Unpregnant Review

Unpregnant (2020) Film Review, a movie directed by Rachel Lee Goldenberg, and starring Haley Lu Richardson, Barbie Ferreira, Giancarlo Esposito, Alex MacNicoll, Breckin Meyer, Sugar Lyn Beard, Denny Love, Mary McCormack, Betty Who, Jeryl Prescott, Ramona Young, Kara Royster, Meg Smith, Sharon Anne Henderson, and Marcos De Silvas.

Comedy has always been the great ice breaker with uncomfortable topics. Don’t wanna say it plainly? Tell it through a joke. It makes things more thematically digestible and open to wider audiences. So! With that in mind, when your task is to tackle teen abortion access via narrative filmmaking, what are you gonna do??

Unpregnant, the newest HBO Max film from writer/director Rachel Lee Goldenberg, takes America’s favorite awkward subject and gives it the teen comedy twist – and to surprisingly affective results.

Upon discovering that she’s pregnant, 17-year-old valedictorian and Brown University-bound Veronica Clarke (Haley Lu Richardson) stumbles into her former best friend Bailey Butler (Barbie Ferreira), now an outspoken loner, who begrudgingly helps keep her secret. Unfortunately, someone finds her pregnancy test and rumors start flying throughout the school, forcing Veronica to lie low and keep her nosy prep friends from prying into the “mystery”. With a small Missouri town Catholic family and a clingy boyfriend (Alex MacNicoll) to boot, Veronica finds it hard to seek out the help (and bodily autonomy) that she desperately needs.

Unable to confide to anyone else Veronica returns to Bailey, who spitefully acquiesces. The two girls set off on a weekend road trip to New Mexico – the nearest state that will allow teens access to abortions without parental consent – with the hopes of being in and out whilst under the radar. But in addition to keeping their whole trip a secret they keep hitting snags on the way – from state troopers to fundamentalists (Breckin Meyer and Sugar Lyn Beard) to a doomsday whacko (Giancarlo Esposito) – to where they wonder if they’ll even make it back to Missouri in one piece … much less before Sunday night.

Goldenberg’s film has undoubtedly been compared to Eliza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always on account of their shared release year and subject matter that, within our culture that is unfortunately still morally cloistered and conservative, is still relatively taboo to depict on-screen (much less talk about on the whole). But rather than being the bleak portrait of America’s oppressing misogyny that Hittman’s film was, Unpregnant imbues its conflict with the teen comedy’s vibrancy and ridiculousness.

On its face that seems like an odd approach – it’s something that even other “abortion comedy” trendsetters like Gillian Robespierre’s terrific Obvious Child didn’t lean into all that much (or at least from the teen angle). But by doing so Goldenberg and her plethora of screenwriters (including Jenni Hendriks and Ted Caplan, on whose novel the film is based) add levity to an otherwise stressful situation and bring it to a more accessible, less-intimidating level. It’s less an “abortion comedy” than it is a “stress comedy” featuring abortion … but I suppose those can be one in the same.

That’s not to suggest that Goldenberg’s comedic chops are better than Hittman’s dramatic approach. It also doesn’t imply that Goldenberg’s film is somehow less authentic via some supposition that it dulls the topic’s sense of urgency. Both films offer valid displays of the hardships women and girls face in modern-day America through scene after emotionally brutal scene. Unlike Never Rarely Sometimes Always’ direct realism, however, Unpregnant just counters such reality with all the more absurdity to help lighten the potentially triggering turmoil. Like its Obvious Child counterpart, it drags the heavy topic of abortion out from the dark indie-drama and awards-bait recesses of cinema to which it’s normally confined, thus destigmatizing it via the blinding light of day that is brash, raucous comedy.

Yes, you can in fact have a movie that features high-speed desert car chases, pawn shop stand-offs, and an anti-government machete-wielding limo driver and still discuss heavy things such as teen access to abortions. In fact, those extremities make the quieter moments and solemn gestures – from instances as profound as Veronica’s heart-to-hearts, to things as banal as her maintaining an unsuspicious social media presence – feel all the more genuine. Like a confident Bailey reassures a nervous Veronica that “One in four women have one,” Unpregnant itself is a normalizing act.

Richardson and Ferreira are fantastic as the two leads, matching each other’s energy with near-perfect chemistry. They both infuse their characters with healthy amounts of angsty teenage pessimism, while Ferreira’s anarchic sarcasm acts as a frequent foil to Richardson’s trademark reserved frankness. It also helps that Goldenberg and her co-writers Hendriks, Caplan, Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, and Bill Parker give the girls so much fast-shooting, sharp-witted barbs to rattle off (which is especially reassuring in Robinson’s case, seeing as her last script felt like it was written by an algorithm).

And yet Unpregnant’s comedic structure is also where its weaknesses lie. It resorts to caricature to allow for the lampooning of certain ideologies and archetypes – particularly dumb controlling men, as well as the rabid anti-choice proselytizers that lead the fundamentalist charge into America’s culture wars. While those groups wholeheartedly deserve a good callout, the film’s portrayal of those elements awkwardly shift its overall tone to one that, while not entirely inaccurate (i.e. one of unbridled, cult-like, gaslighting horror), feels a bit disingenuous in terms of the sudden way it’s thrown in.

The caricatures are reserved for other supporting characters, too, particularly the conspiracy-addled libertarian Bob who the girls get to leave his bunker to give them a ride to Albuquerque. Thankfully the film doesn’t caricature him in any sort of racist nor demeaning manner (if anything the casting of Esposito as a rogue on the outskirts of ABQ is sort of a fun nod to his villainous Breaking Bad role), nor does it caricature its other marginalized characters in any seriously demoralizing ways. However, the film creates these whacky and/or flat side characters that end up just being shallow and dull. The wilder narrative turns the films takes the more these characters start to show up, possibly evident of a petering-out of tonal balance and a lack of control.

But that’s not enough to drag Unpregnant down, as Richardson and Ferreira give Goldenberg’s film more than enough boisterous energy to keep it from ever stalling out (and the stacked soundtrack sure helps carry it along, too). The result is a flawed but fun and fervent treatise on female friendship, and the significance of women and girls upholding each other when no one else will. To anyone with a bit of sense, that’s well worth taking a trip over.

Rating: 7/10

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