FRIENDS WITH KIDS - a film! - Jennifer Westfeldt

These days there may be more forces conspiring to prevent women from *not* having babies--through assaults on abortion, birth control, and sexual assault laws--than those preventing women from having babies. Nevertheless, FRIENDS WITH KIDS brings us the story of Julie, who is reproductively stymied by her lack of success at dating. In the world of this film, adoption is not an option, nor is single motherhood. Julie wants to have a child with a man who will fully take on the duty of supporting her child 50%, but the only man who will support Julie's decision--Jason, her best friend since college--is a man who protests, early and often, that he has absolutely no romantic interest in her. However unrealistic these protestations sound, and look (for Jennifer Westfeldt, in a simultaneous director-producer-actress role for this film, is a pretty woman), we're made to believe them, if only by Julie's complete acceptance.

And Julie has no romantic feelings for Jason, which is somewhat easier to believe, given that Jason is self-centered, piggish, and frequently, albeit wittily, rude. What Julie sees in Jason is left mostly up to the viewer's imagination, but whether Julie can have a child with Jason is a concern swept completely aside. Not only do we leap from a single act of coitus to a hospital delivery room, but the cost, in time and money, of the care and upbringing of their offspring, Joe, is never raised as an issue. Julie and Jason's friends who live in Brooklyn offer a veiled reference to the monetary sacrifices of reproduction, but Julie's vague job--working for a philanthropist--and Jason's, as an advertising executive, seem entirely sufficient.

It may be asking too much for a romantic comedy to engage with social issues deeper than the rift between a man's desire to date young, attractive, vapid women, and a woman's desire to date a strong, competent, and mature man. Certainly the audience understands from the start what will happen to this pair, and hardly sees Megan Fox's glib dancer or Kurt, a divorced contractor, as real competition. The tension is played as equal, between Jason's relationship, which is overtly sexual and little else, and Julie's relationship with Kurt, which shies away from sex even on their couples ski retreat and is portrayed as relentlessly, solidly healthy. Disappointingly, Julie's sexuality is shown as neurotic and incidental to her passions for motherhood and dressing up, while Jason's sexuality is shown as natural and exuberant, if overweening. This is a profoundly imbalanced match, and while we can understand Julie's disapproval of Jason's new paramour as friendly concern as well as jealousy, Jason's displeasure with Julie's new relationship only sounds petty: he takes offense at her characterization of his lacking sexual prowess, but all we've heard from him is how little he wants--and wanted--to have sex with Julie in the first place. How much more interesting this juxtaposition of Julie and Jason's "new people" could have been if Jason were dating someone who wasn't inferior to either him or Julie, in education or maturity, but still had values wholly different from Julie's.

The film strays from its titular description after the first reel, focusing more on Friends With Marriages and the difficulties therein than on the actual children involved. The real work of parenting seems to be more like babysitting: getting a kid to be quiet, making him eat his breakfast, finding someone to watch him while you go on a date. Julie's concern about Joe's schooling is brought up after it has already been addressed, by her decision to move into the district of the best public school in Brooklyn. Jason has already offered to pay for private school, but Julie wants to be farther away from Jason, even if that means less control over the half of Joe's upbringing she outsources to him.

If something positive can be said about FRIENDS WITH KIDS' engagement with social issues, its acceptance of nontraditional--if rich, white, and heterosexual--family structures is admirable. Jon Hamm, taking a small detour from his role as an alcoholic, sex-obsessed asshole on MAD MEN to play an alcoholic, sex-obsessed asshole on the big screen, is concerned about what Julie and Jason will tell Joe when he's older, about his parents, his conception, and his place in their larger families. But the most obvious answer is that they'll just tell him the truth, and, as Maya Rudolph's character points out, he'll be no different from the children with two mommies, or only one parent, or any of a host of other child-rearing situations that are becoming more and more common. Joe has two rich, loving, competent parents. Whether he'll be traumatized later over being conceived out of wedlock seems incidental. If his parents' luck is any indication, he'll be unable to make any serious mistakes at all; Westfeldt leaves no second chance untaken.