'Plan B' can be a tough pill to swallow, but it works.
Remember your first sexual encounter? If your mind had a trash bin, you think maybe you’d click and drag that memory over to it? Hulu’s Plan B is a sort of calamine lotion for any cringeworthy high school moments that may still be tender to the touch. The film reminds us that high school isn’t all hookups and joyrides. But some of it is. Plan B hits the target that it’s aiming for. I’ll concede that the target is fairly broad, and the word formulaic is not inappropriate. But the formula is tried and true; a nerdy young woman and her slacker best friend on a road trip - nay, a mission - to erase any evidence of an awkward decision.
Lets start with the script. It was written by Joshua Levy and Prathiksha Srinivasan in a way that gives Kuhoo Verma (Sunny) and Victoria Moroles (Lupe) every opportunity to be funny. A script where the funny is baked-in is an immense load lifted off of the shoulders of director Natalie Morales. Worrying about your mom finding out, while sitting on a bench with your mom’s face on it as she’s a real estate agent, for instance, is just going to be funny. Plain and simple. There don’t seem to be many places to go wrong as an actor here. Fair warning, there are political overtones written into the script. At the heart of the plot, the 2 best friends embark on a journey to the closest Planned Parenthood location so that they can purchase a morning-after pill. To ask a film to remain neutral on related topics is unrealistic. But politics can cheapen the humor a bit if laid on too thick. Thankfully, Plan B was able to elude falling victim to categorization as a ‘message’ movie, a wise dodge for a comedy.
Who will I sit with, what’s my locker combination and will I be killed by the drug-addicted creep who sleeps in the local playground? Plan B commands answers to these classic questions. Cinematography and editing were generally pretty good - barring what, by my lights, are a couple minor missteps. Firstly, you can imagine the utility of cinematic push-ins to capture embarrassment/concern/terror in the context of two outcast teenagers. This emphasis technique was used, not overused. there is a shot in the film while the two are ordering plan b from behind a pharmacy counter. The camera points way down at them, giving the viewer a towering perspective. It is a microcosm of the entire dichotomy at play in this film - young kids yearning for the advantages that come with adulthood; sex, booze, Plan B, weed, etc. Another standout shot is the shadows of our protagonists’ wandering hands behind a map - a good example of the kind of creativity on display by cinematographer Sandra Valde-Hansen. A time-lapse shot of our protagonists passed out on a couch at a house party is the kind of thing that seems completely necessary in movies about high school. They’re missing otherwise. But a shot of the shadows of those character’s hands moving across a map as we stare through the back of it? Those are the kinds of choices that make Plan B worth watching.
Now, let’s balance the equation. The editing fell short for me. There are too many cuts in the conversations that take place, and so the naturalistic acting styles - the ones that directors work so hard to extract from their actors - aren’t preserved. High school is strange and awkward. Let us live in these moments with these characters, instead of forcing them on us by cutting between medium-close ups. Give me the hard, weird conversation, like Lupe meeting her online crush for the first time, in a simple wide shot the whole time. Chain me to the cinematic radiator and tape my eyes open. We turned it on so that we could feel this gawky and graceless again. So let us have it next time.
After the first hour much of the acting feels redundant. I think that any director in Natalie Morales’ shoes asks themselves eventually, “did I put the right two girls in this car?” They certainly work well together. In fact I’m not convinced that there were better women that could’ve been chosen. But it does seem like better guidance could’ve been given to these young actors. Sunny’s exasperate rambling is a bit repetitive, and the relationship between Lupe and her dad is not cheap - I couldn’t buy it.
It isn’t a comfortable watch - but the funny ones rarely are. We have the fortune, or misfortune rather, of seeing this character’s first sexual encounter. From the initial interaction to the post-coital anxiety. Soup to nuts. It’s awful - thus, hilarious. The film checks more boxes than it misses, and probably even more if you’re in the teenage demographic. But just like its characters at times, Plan B seems to have two left feet.