Family problems, '90s style

How you react to Landline, a comedy set in 1995, depends a lot on how you react to Jenny Slate, a comic actress whose performance encompasses what might be called a level of hysteria you'll either find endearing or annoying. (I leaned toward annoying.) On the verge of marriage, Slate's Dana is one of those characters who hasn't settled into her self. As a result, Dana's not sure whether she's ready to spend a lifetime with her fiancé (Jay Duplass). Dana's father, on the other hand, has been in a long marriage with his sometimes sardonic wife (Edie Falco). An advertising copywriter who aspires to be a playwright, Dad (John Turturro) is having an affair that's discovered when Dana's rebellious younger sister (Abby Quinn) finds a series of love poems Dad has written to his mistress. How rebellious is Quinn's Ali? She smokes cigarettes, has become sexually active and even tries snorting heroin. Meanwhile, Slate's Dana acts out her uncertainty about marriage by having an affair with an old college flame (Finn Wittrock). The supporting performances are sharp and the writing by Lillian Robespierre, who directed, and Elizabeth Holm, can be funny. (Robespierre, by the way, directed Slate in Obvious Child, a 2014 rom-com involving a woman who has an abortion). Landline never creates the feeling that anything momentous hangs in its easy-going balance, but it has been drawn with affection for characters whose struggles, for the most part, feel real -- if not profound. Remember it's the '90s, a time when people still had dot-matrix printers attached to their clunky looking computers. It doesn't have much to do with what the movie's about, but looking at these techno dinosaurs made we wonder whether anyone ever swooned with nostalgia over yesterday's technology. I'm guessing, no.

'Obvious Child': a different kind of romcom

Jenny Slate stars in a movie about an aspiring comic who isn't ready for motherhood.

Obvious Child deserves credit for dealing with abortion in an entirely credible way -- presuming you're talking about the abortion of a privileged New York woman who lives in trendy Brooklyn and is trying to make her way into the competitive world of stand-up comedy.

Director Gillian Robespierre makes her debut with a romantic comedy built around an aspiring comedian you'll either find funny or annoying. I leaned toward the latter view, which undoubtedly colored my opinion about this widely praised indie.

Jenny Slate's Donna Stern works at a bookstore that's going out of business and performs her personalized comic routines in a low-grade nightspot.

On stage, Donna talks about herself in ways that mix self-deprecation and hostility. She's one of those comics who giggles at her own jokes, which, as I've said, didn't do much to move the needle on my laugh meter.

And that would have been fine had the movie recognized that Donna may be marking time before she gets on with her "real" life. I'm not sure it does.

Slate (familiar from TV's Bob's Burgers, Parks and Recreation and Kroll Show) doesn't do much to take her character beneath the surface. Donna's a self-absorbed young woman with divorced parents: an artsy-fartsy, puppeteer father (Richard Kind) and a strictly business mom (Polly Draper).

Early on, Donna is dumped by her boyfriend (Paul Briganti). He's put off by the fact that she discusses their relationship on stage, suggesting an under-explored and interesting subject: What happens when someone uses someone else's life as material?

A distraught Donna tries to rebound with a drunken one-night stand. She sleeps with Max (Jake Lacy), a WASPy guy who happens to find her funny and engaging, and who's also consistently nice.

A night that might have fizzled into memory persists when Donna discovers that she's pregnant. She's smart enough to know that she's not ready for motherhood, and never wavers in her desire to have an abortion.

That's not to say that she's callous about it: Donna understands that she's making a big decision, and she eventually has a conversation with her mother about it.

Mom knows what life was like before Roe vs. Wade. It's the opposite with Donna. We're talking about a young woman who has grown up with abortion and accepts it -- although she probably never thought she'd find herself in a position where she needed one.

Meanwhile, Lacy's Max persists in his pursuit of Donna. He doesn't know she's pregnant, and sees a possibility for a deeper relationship.

There's not much supporting cast here. Gaby Hoffmann has a nice turn as Donna's best friend; and Gabe Leiderman plays a gay comic who's also one of Donna's pals.

Obvious Child is bound to connect with lots of young women: For me, the movie would have worked better had Donna been something other than mediocre stand-up comic. Many of her routines are sprinkled, Louie-like throughout the movie, a ploy that, for me, just didn't work.

Obvious Child does, however, lower the volume of talk about abortion, allowing a female character to treat it as a part of life -- not a happy one, but one that is not necessarily ruinous or soul-shattering, either.

That statement deserved a more substantial movie.