Mark Reviews Movies: PLAN B (2021)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 27, 2021

The recent rise of raunchy comedies revolving around teenage girls and young women has started to level the playing field, after decades of similar comedies that focused on teenage boys and young men (not to mention older men who behave—and are cheered on for behaving—like teenagers, which is an entirely different issue). Plan B is another film in that vein, presenting the misadventures of two teenage girls as they try to find romance, a bit of sex, and, in the bigger picture, some sense of purpose in a world that doesn't appear to care about their wants, needs, and, well, sense of purpose. It's smart and heartfelt about these characters' desires and necessities, and director Natalie Morales' film is very funny about those things, too.

We meet best friends Sunny (Kuhoo Verma) and Lupe (Victoria Moroles), who are outsiders among their peers in high school but don't care too much about that status. Sunny, an A-student who feels a lot of pressure to succeed, is longing for love on an esoteric and, obviously, physical level (There's an amusingly sad honesty to an early moment when she uses an anatomy textbook as some visual stimulus for one of her morning routines).

The object of her secret affection/infatuation is a guy named Hunter (Michael Provost), who constantly dons a cardigan (even while playing field hockey, making him look like, to a swooning Sunny, "an athletic librarian"). The young man even, like Sunny, sees through the façade of a pro-abstinence video in health class. The video itself uses the metaphor of a beat-up car for a just-married woman's sexual history, which leads Sunny and Hunter to riff on the condition of her husband's car and what it would mean if someone takes public transportation within the context of this metaphor. Joshua Levy and Prathiksha Srinivasan's screenplay has several gags as cleverly cutting as this one, but the key is that they point toward how knowing and funny these characters are.

This is, in a way, one of those now old-fashioned sex comedies, as Sunny and Lupe talk freely, honestly, and with an appropriate degree of teenaged vulgarity about the deed. It will, undoubtedly, cause a bit of a stir among certain people, not only because it features girls and women talking in such a way about such very normal things, but also because the actual plot is more of a post-sex comedy. The adventure isn't about trying to have sex, as teenage boys and young men have been having in movies for a long time. It's about what needs to be done when reality invades those romantic, idealized plans.

Sunny does indeed have sex for the first time, although not with Hunter, who drives away with another girl from a party. A despondent Sunny ends up with the super-religious Kyle (Mason Cook) in the bathroom. It seems like a mistake—a regrettable but innocent one—at first. The next morning, though, Sunny finds a condom in the last place she would want to find it. She needs an emergency contraception pill and fast—within the next 48 hours, if it's going to have any efficacy.

This would, of course, seem simple, except that the story is set in South Dakota, where a pharmacist can claim a breach of his conscience in order to deny Sunny's request, where the nearest clinic for women's health and reproductive concerns is a few hours away, and where, in general, the culture has told teens and women like Sunny that they shouldn't talk about such matters and should be ashamed of mistakes involving something natural. The film wears its politics on its sleeve, although in a way that's so engrained into this story and these characters that we only notice the sleeve.

Sunny and Lupe—who tags along to support her friend and has her eye on a bowling alley, where her own crush is playing a concert that night, in the general direction of their destination—borrow Sunny's mom's van, hit the highway, and inevitably come across a bunch of complications and obstacles along the way to the clinic. Some are minor, such as a closed road. Some are more significant, such as the van going missing. Some are odd, such as an encounter with a low-rent drug dealer who might have one of the pills among his stash, and only escalate from there, such as where that drug dealer has a piercing on his body and how it ends up dangling from someone else.

The story, in other words, is filled with gags, from the characters' clever dialogue to the bigger jokes, like the drug dealer or another party, where Sunny, in a drug-fueled frenzy, has to hunt down the keys to the van. The heart of this story, though, is much simpler and more thoughtful, observing how the pressure Sunny feels to succeed—combined with a sense of failing her mother's expectations—leads her to such extremes, how the confident Lupe is still scared of what her best friend might think if Sunny learns a secret about her, and how this friendship stands the test of all the challenges society, this weird night, and they themselves have put in their way.

Again, Plan B is equal parts funny and earnest, and the material is undoubtedly elevated by the central performances. Verma is a likeable hoot as the anxious, increasingly desperate Sunny, and if Moroles' effortless turn as the seemingly self-assured (albeit with a lot of doubt underneath that cool exterior) and quick-witted Lupe doesn't immediately start her on the path toward stardom, there's little chance for any actor.

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