TICK TOCK LULLABY

Deciding to have children can be a tricky topic, regardless of your sexual persuasion.

Writer/director Lisa Gornick stars in this dramedy about the joys and hardships of getting pregnant. Sasha (Gornick) and Maya (Raquel Cassidy) are a lesbian couple that want to have a baby, but the turkey baster is too, well, impersonal. They want a baby the natural way, which in their mind means finding a man, getting him to sleep with one of them, then hopefully (viola!) having a baby in one fell swoop. The problem is that none of their pals or acquaintances seem like good candidates, so they decide to cruise for a stranger (which, in my mind at least, could get you in a heck of a lot more trouble).

Meanwhile, straight couple Fiona (Joanna Bending) and Steve (Sam Spruell) are indeed working on their own old-fashioned conception, which involves lots of checking off of dates on the calendar, lots of perfunctory sex, and lots of arguments. Steve seems like a good guy, and tries to make the whole task enjoyable, but boy oh boy, Fiona is a case of Ms. Jealous Cranky Pants, and seems miserable about the whole process. Well, she sure sounds like a great parent-to-be!

And unluckily for Fiona, her own sister Gillian (Sarah Patterson), a single artist, has decided that she, too, wants a baby. Gillian lures young healthy looking men to her flat, quizzes them on their history and interests under the guise of taking arty photos, then has their way with them. Hm. Is this simply to be competitive with her sister? Does she think a child will be a nice accessory to her urban lifestyle? Her motives are unclear.

Alas, the only people that seem to be going about this whole pregnancy business the safest way are the couple that seems most likely to break up. Oh, the humanity!

Anyways, among the three stories (which overlap some, to not-so-much), the most interesting is Sasha and Maya's. They get the best dialogue, and are the most relatable characters. When they find and land a hot guy named Lawrence (Jake Canuso), their reactions to their actions seem the most realistic. But in the meantime, their story is interrupted by the not-so-interesting het couple, and the under-developed character of the single woman.

Since Gornick wrote and directed Tick Tock Lullaby, she perhaps was trying to make the film more universal by putting a variety of straight folks into the plot. But perhaps she should have stuck to the story of the lesbian couple—obviously she found them the most interesting, giving them the best lines and most development. These two characters shine over the rest, and would have made a better movie in and of themselves.