Ari is an MMA fighter looking to take her career to the next level. However, her plan is complicated by her coach, who is also her mother. Mom wants her to settle down, date, marry and have children. Ari isn't interested, despite the pressure from her family. Instead, she wants to go to Thailand to attend a training program. To pay for it, she participates in an illegal underground fight to win money, but in doing so, she runs afoul of the criminal enterprise organizing it. It's the fight of her life to extricate herself from the mess, and she'll need more than just her ability to fight to win. Directed by Calvin Sang from a script written by co-creator Ankita Singh, this action-packed short comedy is as rollicking, dynamic and unpredictable as the MMA fights that make up its high-voltage action sequences. But even in the controlled chaos of its frenetic camerawork, acrobatic fight choreography and bright, busy visuals, it never loses sight of its heroine's central emotional dilemma, as she fights for her vision of her future, despite the disapproval of her formidable mother. Like the energetic main character, the storytelling is propulsive and fast-moving from the start, immersing us in Ari's colorful, gritty milieu.
Yet she's also embedded in her close-knit family, presided over by her strong-willed mother, who was a fighter as well. It's easy to see where Ari gets her strength, will, and power from, yet her mother wants something more secure and traditional for her daughter, seeing domesticity as a safer and less risky life path. The entertaining writing handles this conflict with a lightness of touch and a gift for finding the comedy in the action and drama, but the clash of intentions is also played for sincerity, grounded in emotional truth for the characters. As Ari, actor Roxie Mohebbi is engaging and charismatic as the gifted, independent fighter, a maverick who wants to follow her path. In truth, she's not so different from her mother, played expressively by Celeste Wong with a deep affection for her daughter and a steely will. Eventually, Ari's secrets come out, which also forces her truth and its resulting conflicts out into the open. Being a comedy action-thriller, GIVE ME BABIES plays this confluence of truth and tension as a perfect storm, bringing together mother, daughter and criminals into one final sequence full of mayhem, zingers, fist-fights and even some swordplay. It's all supremely entertaining in its kinetic, screwball energy, but it's also big-hearted. Mother and daughter save themselves by learning to work together -- and realize they're more alike than not in their fiery spirit.
Omeleto
