PLAN B: An Inclusive Raunchy Teen Comedy
Natalie Morales is not messing around. After premiering her first directorial outing, Language Lessons, to favorable reviews at this year’s Berlinale Film Festival, the actor-turned-filmmaker is coming back for her second feature of the year, the raunchy and wholesome comedy Plan B. At first glance, the movie looks just like another teen quest comedy we’ve seen countless times before — the one with an awkward sexual encounter, a tested friendship, and a crazy road trip. But Plan B actually shares more similarity to Never Rarely Sometimes Always and Unpregnant than it does with, say, Superbad and Booksmart.
Like Eliza Hittman‘s Sundance hit, Plan B has something to say about women’s rights, but it does so with laughs and extreme raunchiness. The only and major difference is, instead of yet again featuring two white characters, Morales decides to focus on two characters of color — something that the subgenre, with the exception of Harold and Kumar, has rarely done before. The result is a comedy that, on top of being hilarious, also feels inclusive.
A Road Trip to Remember
Written by Prathi Srinivasan and Joshua Levy, the movie tells the story of two best friends, Sunny (Kuhoo Verma) and Lupe (Victoria Moroles), who embark on an unforgettable road trip across America’s heartland to hunt for the titular morning-after pill. Where Lupe is a slacker goth from a strict Catholic family, Sunny is a straight-A, shy young woman with an overbearing Indian mother. One day, when the popular girl at their school has to cancel a party she’s supposed to throw, Lupe proposes an idea to Sunny that she should take over and throw her first-ever rager at her house right when her mother is out of town for a business trip.
Their main goal, however, is not to be the new popular girls at school, rather to simply use the party to get close to their crushes, Hunter (Michael Provost) for Sunny and the mysterious Logan (Myha’la Herrold) for Lupe, and maybe to eventually have sex with them. Suffice to say, things do not go as planned. Instead of hooking up with Hunter, Sunny, desperate and frustrated, not to mention horny, ends up losing her virginity with Kyle (Mason Cook), whom both she and Lupe dislike. To make things even worse, the condom that Kyle used isn’t doing its job; it falls out of Sunny’s vagina, which, of course, makes her panic beyond belief.
Hoping to get a Plan B pill, Sunny, accompanied by Lupe, goes to the only pharmacy in town. But the pharmacist (Jay Chandrasekhar) refuses to sell the pill to Sunny, quoting a real but ridiculous South Dakota law known as the “Conscious Clause,” which allows any pharmacists to not sell the morning-after pill if it goes against their moral belief. And having not much choice left, Sunny and Lupe decide to go to the nearest Planned Parenthood, which is three hours away from where they live. And that’s where things begin to become more chaotic for the both of them.
A hilarious yet creepy encounter with a drug dealer, a brief romantic getaway at a bowling alley where they finally meet their crushes, a PCP-induced night are just some events that unfold during their road trip. And while none of these is exactly original, the script from Srinivasan and Levy offers so many memorable laughs. It certainly helps that the two lead actors are always up to the game, elevating the familiarity of the movie to somehow make it fresh. Verma, who has a small role in The Big Sick, has excellent comedic timing. She reacts to the outlandish situation of the road trip in a way that feels natural. Moroles breezes through each scene with a swagger. The two feed off of each other’s energy. And their chemistry always sparks the screen. On top of that, both Verma and Moroles also bring depth and layer underneath the humor.
Deceptively Deep
Though the raunchy road trip is the highlight of the movie, what Plan B excels most at is actually in the quieter moments, like the one when our two heroines have a heart-to-heart conversation about their families. Morales, with her confident direction, knows how to tug at our heartstrings without trying too hard. She brings out the heart and the emotion in the script all the while never jettisoning the laughs. For a novice director, the balance between comedy and drama that Morales is able to maintain throughout the movie is on-point.
The road trip, eccentric as it is, actually mirrors the reality and difficulty in which young girls and women like Sunny and Lupe have to face every day in America, especially in a highly conservative state like South Dakota, to demonstrate their choice and rights over their own body. Women should always have the option to choose when it comes to this matter. Plan B, in the end, wants us to think and reflect on this issue, but it does so in a way that never feels didactic. There is no too-on-the-nose big speech about women’s rights. The message always lies in the action. And that’s what makes the movie deceptively deeper than what it appears to be.
While the movie doesn’t always feel consistent throughout — at times the jokes don’t always land — and it does not exactly reinvent the teen quest comedy subgenre, Plan B has plenty of fun and heart to offer, and while doing so, it never once treats the serious subject it addresses as a laughing matter. A winning teen comedy with star-making performances from its two leads.
What do you think of Natalie Morales’ second movie of the year? Let us know in the comments below!
Plan B is streaming on Hulu starting from May 28, 2021.
Watch Plan B
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