Film Clip: Friends with Kids

Two platonic best friends (Adam Scott and writer-director Jennifer Westfeldt) agree to have a kid together, no strings attached, so they can get “the parent thing” out of the way and continue their separate searches for Ms. and Mr. Right. We know where this is heading, but the beauty of Westfeldt’s script is that the characters are so three-dimensional that we want it to go there, and there are a lot of knowing laughs along the way. First-time director Westfeldt, a veteran actress and writer of 2001’s Kissing Jessica Stein, has something like the wit and insight of Woody Allen at his best, and her movie is a bracing antidote to shallow rom-coms like Failure to Launch and Made of Honor. She has a great cast, too (Maya Rudolph, Jon Hamm, Kristen Wiig, Chris O’Dowd), and gives them plenty of good lines. J.L.