Plan B is a buddy comedy about the perils of restricted abortion access

Natalie Morales’ 2021 movie Plan B This is rare: A warm and funny buddy comedy on the road about two teenager girls who will do anything for one another. It also addresses the dangers of limiting access to reproductive care.

One of the girls, Sunny (Kuhoo Verma), is a shy nerd, while the other, Lupe (Victoria Moroles), is closer to “rebel goth.” Sunny has a crush on a boy at school, and Lupe convinces her to throw a party at her house in an effort to win him over. Sunny has drunken sex after the boy leaves her with one of the most well-liked girls in school. Kyle is almost as worried as Sunny afterwards.

When that drunken encounter turns into a pregnancy scare, Sunny and Lupe go to a pharmacy to get a Plan B pill but are turned away because they don’t have a parent present. Understandably nervous to go to her parents with this situation, Sunny decides to take her mom’s car and drive with Lupe to the nearest Planned Parenthood — hours away in Rapid City.

Photo: Brett Roedel/Hulu

From there, the movie turns into the kind of lighthearted buddy comedy you’d expect from the road trip genre, filled with raucous gags and ridiculous situations. Verma and Moroles are great in their roles of friends, who will literally kill for one another and also are in way beyond their heads. Their chemistry is infectious and it shines on the screen. Rachel Dratch and the supporting cast are full of hilarious bit players.SNL), Edi Patterson (The Righteous GemstonesMoses Storm (Players).

As Polygon’s Maddy Myers put it in our list of 10 great LGBTQ comedies you can watch at home:

There’s also a lot of gross-out humor in this movie (there’s an on-screen penis piercing, for example), but given that the premise is about human bodies and all of their unexpected and inconvenient capabilities, it works.

You can’t forget about the drama, even with all the humor and light-hearted laughs. Plan BThe pitiful inability to access abortions for most Americans is the root of all this. This is a fact that many people are aware of. Sunny was not given the pill by her pharmacist. Sunny wasn’t able to find any local help. Sunny didn’t want to talk to her parents about this. Plan B It is capable of organizing a fun, rompy genre around a narrative structure which directly addresses the implications of our treatment of reproductive rights in this nation. It’s a delicate balance, but one that works.

Plan B You can watch it on Hulu.