Seth Rogen has pursued a wide range of projects across his career, and his recent performances in The Studio and The Invite prove his screen persona has changed a lot from the studio comedies that made him a leading man. Yet, Rogen still credits Judd Apatow, with whom he worked on several films, including The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, as being the key reason why his career is successful. It only makes sense, then, that Rogen would harken back to his roots at some point.

He does just that in the new film Babies, which premiered at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival. Although Apatow had no direct involvement, his influence on the project – which stars Rogen and was written and directed by his wife, actor and filmmaker Lauren Miller Rogen – is abundantly clear.

Babies follows Aaron (Seth Rogen) and Annie (Anna Kendrick), a couple in their mid-to-late 30s who don’t exactly fit in with their friend group for one simple reason: They don’t have kids. The rest of their social circle are all focused heavily on their children, while Aaron and Annie fend off questions about if they, too, will ever take the plunge into parenthood. Babies sees the couple navigate these questions and debate whether they should become parents, while highlighting the individual journeys of some of their friends and family as well.

Babies Doesn’t Work As A Comedy Or A Drama

Judd Apatow’s films are so unique in part because they exist in the middle ground between comedy and drama. In a film like Knocked Up, for example, there are plenty of humorous moments, but at the core of the story is a very tender, serious situation of two people who are preparing to become parents. Babies aims for a similar sort of balance, but ultimately gets it badly wrong.

The film is packed with jokes – the daughter of Annie’s friend pooping in an art museum and Aaron accidentally hitting a 14-year-old in the face, to name a few. But none of these gags actually land; many of them fall so flat that one could hear a pin drop in the theater. They’re all the same sort of jokes viewers have heard a million times before, often in other Seth Rogen movies, told and delivered much better than they are here.

Babies Comes On Too Strong With Its Messaging

Aaron and Annie claim to be ambivalent about whether they want children, yet the surrounding film appears to have a strong message about the benefits of not becoming a parent. Babies highlights many of the bad parts of being a parent, but shows very little of the positives. Seth and Lauren Miller Rogen are vocal in real life about not wanting children, and these views are too heavy throughout the film. This is supposed to be the kind of story where the audiences follow along with the characters and ultimately decide for themselves if they think parenthood is a good idea, but the script goes far too heavily in one direction.

There are some strengths that come from this sort of approach, however. Lauren Miller Rogen goes all-in on her beliefs regarding becoming a parent, and it’s certainly authentic in its execution regardless of whether one agrees. That authenticity is seen not only with the core question of the story, but with other aspects of Babies as well.

For example, the Rogens have a strong passion for pottery in their personal life, and Lauren Miller Rogen’s mother suffered from Alzheimer’s disease for years before eventually passing away. Both of these things are core parts of the film’s story. The compelling nature of watching a film that appears, in many ways, to be semi-autobiographical in nature is somewhat of a redemtive feature, but not enough to carry the experience.