The morning after is just the beginning.
Plan B is a 2021 Teen Buddy Road Comedy film, directed by Natalie Morales, and starring Kuhoo Verma and Victoria Moroles.
It follows a straight-laced high school student, Sunny (Verma) and her slacker best friend Lupe (Moroles) who, after a regrettable first sexual encounter, have 24 hours to hunt down a Plan B pill in South Dakota.
The film was released on Hulu in the United States on May 28th, 2021.
Not to be confused with an earlier Argentinian movie Plan B.
Tropes featured in Plan B include:
- Against My Religion:
- Kyle, who's Christian, gets distraught upon having sex with Sunny, since it was extramarital, and says he has to go pray. He later freaks out and calls Sunny in despair.
- The pharmacist denies Lupe (covering for Sunny) Plan B due to it being against his beliefs (it's allowed under state law in South Dakota under a "conscience clause"), which causes them to look for another source.
- Age-Inappropriate Dress: Sunny dresses more like a middle schooler than a high schooler, mostly because her mother enforces her to act as a goody-two-shoes. She is keenly aware of this and mortified when she overhears her classmates mocking her for it. She rebels at one point by trying to cut her panties into a thong and her tie-dyed Orca t-shirt into a belly shirt, and putting on sultry makeup.
- All for Nothing: Played seriously and then humorously.
- After spending a day and a night trying desperately to get to Planned Parenthood, Sunny and Lupe discover that the location permanently closed recently, and had not been updated on Google.
- Sunny finally confesses to her mother that she needs emergency contraception, and her mother effortlessly non-verbally curbstomps the difficult pharmacist into selling it to her. Turns out, the entire trip could have been avoided if they had simply asked a responsible adult for help.
- Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: The plot begins because Sunny gets drunk and has sex (consensually with Kyle, who is also drunk), mostly out of loneliness and desperation to lose her virginity, and is too drunk to notice the condom was left inside her.
- Ambiguous Situation: It's left ambiguous in the end if Lupe's father has guessed that she is queer and waiting for her to feel comfortable enough to come out, or if he's ignorant to this fact. On the one hand, he assures her that he would never kick her out judge her for who she is, without knowing the reason for her question. On the other hand he pointedly follows this up by pointedly complimenting her newly acquired Queer Pride pin, but doesn't make it clear if he knows what it is.
- Batter Up!: Doris from the store Lupe and Sunny visit rescues them from two creeps by wielding a baseball bat (she uses it on their truck). She then reveals she was initially intending to threaten Sunny and Lupe with it because she realized Lupe had shoplifted from the store.
- Beware the Silly Ones: A running theme in the film is the silly characters becoming dangerous. Doris seems like an eccentric gas station attendant until she brings out the baseball bat, Andy seems like a harmless stoner until he extorts the girls for sex, and Logan's bandmate Xander goes from comically high to borderline murderous at the drop of a hat.
- Bigger Is Better in Bed: Andy is quite large, and has chosen to pierce his penis with a huge ring. He says women like it.
- Brick Joke: The enormous piercing that Sunny accidentally rips off Andy's junk. She discards it in her mom's van the instant she gets it out of her hair halfway through the film. The very last moment has her mother discovering it and asking suspiciously what it is.
- Cell Phones Are Useless: Zigzagged:
- At one point, Lupe and Sunny get lost while driving, as the exit they wanted to take is closed and they get turned around trying to find an alternate route. By then it's dark and they have accidentally wandered into a dead zone. Fortunately they spot a gas station, and the attendant, Doris, is able to give them directions to drive out of the dead zone.
- Later, the van they are using vanishes after Lupe entrusts Logan with the keys, and Lupe cannot call Logan because Lupe left her phone in the car. Fortunately, Sunny can use her phone combined with Lupe's Find-My-Phone app, meaning (now that they have service) Sunny can easily track down the van.
- Closet Gay: It turns out Lupe is queer and in the closet, even to her bestie Sunny (what she says indicates she's possibly bi or pansexual).
- Coming of Age Story: Definitely. Two friends have to run away from home to brave the wilds of conservative South Dakota to get contraception.
- Coming-Out Story: As a secondary plot, Lupe plans to tell Sunny she's queer (bi or pansexual, from what she says). However, Sunny realizes for herself on meeting Logan, who's Lupe's girlfriend (Sunny'd thought it was a guy's name). Lupe still hasn't told her dad by the end, but has been reassured he would never kick her out and he'd love her no matter what.
- Covered in Mud: Xander faceplants into the muddy driveway that he attempts to pursue Sunny, Lupe, and Logan across. Sunny then hits him with a van (nonfatally), which promptly also gets covered in mud from his clothing.
- Disappeared Dad: Sunny's dad is out of the picture, and her mom is a successful single mom who's a realtor.
- Dramatically Delayed Drug: Sunny, in a moment of desperation after the van disappears, takes the pill she stole from Andy, which he had indicated was either Plan B, PCP, or Speed. It turns out to be Speed, but it doesn't kick in until she and Lupe have reached Doug's party. Intoxication Ensues, along with a bit of Stimulant Speedtalk, but she remains functional.
- Education Mama: Sunny's mother is slightly obsessed with her grades and holding her daughter to a standard of perfection that is impossible. However, she gets better by the end of the film, and accepts that Sunny is growing up and needs to make her own choices.
- Easily-Overheard Conversation: Kyle at one point calls Sunny while distraught and guilty over their sexual encounter, but Sunny is driving with the speaker phone on with Lupe in the passenger seat, who overhears and silently reacts to everything (Lupe had led her to believe she had had sex with Hunter, not Kyle).
- Gargle Blaster: The concoction that Sunny and Lupe throw together for Sunny's party. It includes cheap red wine, grain alcohol, strawberries, and cough syrup. Lupe dubs the drink the "Skull Fuck". It tastes awful, but succeeds in getting them both drunk.
- Gender-Blender Name: Lupe's girlfriend is named Logan, as a result of which Sunny thinks initially that she's a guy (Lupe didn't correct it either and deliberately used non-gendered language).
- Groin Attack: Sunny inadvertently does this when going to give Andy fellatio. As she backs away, her hair gets caught on his dick piercing, which rips out.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: Doris the gas station clerk tells a rambling story about her husband's death, which was caused by him riding between two cars with a leg in each windows. One veered away slightly and caused him to rip apart, apparently right at the seem of his scrotum.
- Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: Lupe sometimes gives off this vibe, and will frequently bring up (heterosexual) sex, and implies she has had, relative to Sunny, a lot of it. She's actually deeply in the closet, and while she did sleep with a guy at church camp, that has been the extent of her sexual experience. Her talking about sex frequently is at least in part to deliberately lean into her perceived slutty-ness so that her classmates cannot easily mock her.
- Lousy Lovers Are Losers: After Sunny's real crush Hunter drives off with another hunger. In 'revenge' she gets drunk and throws herself into the arms of Christian enthusiast Kyle. Sex with him is awful, being clumsy, fast, and worst of all, he doesn't wear the condom correctly, making her panic about getting pregnant. Meanwhile, Kyle is portrayed as selfish since his only worry was about the fact extramarital sex is sinful.
- Male Frontal Nudity: Andy shows his large and pierced penis in explicit detail at length when the girls debate who will give him oral sex.
- Mama Bear: When Sunny tells her mom she'd been trying to get the Plan B pill, which the pharmacist would not give her, rather than be mad her mom immediately goes there and browbeats him into doing it with a single Death Glare.
- Missing Mom: Lupe's mom died in the past. Since then, her dad became very strict and overprotective.
- Nice Guy: Hunter, Sunny's crush, turns out to be this. When they actually go on a date to a diner, he is quite friendly and charming, and he immediately picks up on Sunny's distress, and makes her laugh and relax by having his waffle ask her what's wrong. When she confesses her whole situation to him and expresses her regret and shame, he immediately tells her there is nothing to be ashamed of, assures her that she will figure out a solution, and he will help if he can. He doesn't try to fix her situation, but does provide a shoulder to lean on, and expresses how much he genuinely likes her. They end up sharing Sunny's first kiss together by the end of it.
- Not What It Looks Like: Twice:
- Hunter leaves Sunny's party early with another girl (who had expressed attraction to him), and Sunny watches him drive away in his pickup, with him swerving slightly to avoid a parked car. She assumes that this was because they were kissing in the car as he was driving. However, Hunter later reveals that he only gave the other girl a ride home because she was drunk (nothing untoward happened), and he swerved his truck because she vomited on the seat next to him at that moment.
- Lupe leaves Logan with Sunny's mom's van while she gets Sunny from her date, only to return to find both the van and Logan have vanished. It immediately seems like Logan stole the van. It turns out Logan's intoxicated bandmate Xander stole the van, and Logan disappeared because she was pursuing him to get it back.
- Older Than They Look: Andy makes the ridiculous claim that he is actually 17 years old, the same age as Lupe and Sunny, and that his older appearance is because he has literally never drunk water. He only says this so that his sexual coercion won't come off as statutory rape (although coercion still is a form of rape).
- Only Known by Their Nickname:
- Sunny is only called her full name, Sunita, by her mother.
- Lupe's really Guadalupe, but only her dad uses that.
- The Pastor's Queer Kid: Lupe is a closeted queer girl, whose dad's a minister. She's reluctant to come out at first, afraid of his possible reaction. However, he reassures her by the end that he'd never reject her, no matter what.
- Preacher's Kid: Lupe's dad is a pastor, and she's a rebellious queer teen who chafes at his rules.
- Road Trip Plot: Most of the plot is Sunny and Lupe going to Planned Parenthood in another city for the Plan B pill, since the pharmacy near them won't issue it.
- Running Gag: Sunny has the bizarre idea that all Indian people in South Dakota know each other, and if any Indian person sees her doing something questionable, they will tell her mother. She calls it the Indian Mafia. She encounters two people of Indian descent in the film, the pharmacist and a man at the bowling alley. Lupe counters that the Indian Mafia cannot possibly exist, but then the man at the bowling alley seems to believe in it too (he hurriedly pushes his white girlfriend away when Sunny notices him, and audibly declares his fear of the Indian Mafia). In the end, Sunny's mother does learn about some of her daughter's activities, which Sunny blames on the Indian Mafia.
- Seen It All: Doris, upon hearing of Sunny's troubles, casually reveals that similar things have happened to her.
- Sex for Services: Andy demands oral sex from Sunny or Lupe if they want his last Plan B pill (which is really just speed). Neither is keen on this, but even more horrified at the thought of the other doing it, even arguing who'll do it, with both volunteering. Lupe finally agrees to, then pulls back and gets her hair caught in his penis ring, which is pulled out, so it never happens. Serves him right.
- Sex Miseducation Class: The Abstinence-Only Sex Ed class consists of the former Home Economics teacher showing the students an educational video. The video turns out to be a comically-bad PSA that describes sex-before-marriage using the metaphor of a woman letting another man drive her car before she is married, complete with Bad "Bad Acting". Fortunately the students realize just what a poor education this is and pointedly ask thoughtful questions that shatter the metaphor, to the chagrin of the teacher.
- Shout-Out: Being a teen comedy, there are a few.
- Speed Sex: Kyle lasts about ten seconds with Sunny when they have sex, to her disappointment.
- The Stoner: Downplayed, but Lupe is constantly puffing on her vape throughout the film, and even has a stash of joints she shares with Logan. It doesn't seem to effect her ability to drive in the slightest, and she's quite alert through the majority of the film. It actually comes in handy when she is able to trade a few puffs of the vape to Doris in return for not being held accountable for stealing the friendship necklaces.
- That Came Out Wrong: Lupe, upon welcoming Hunter to her party, asks him "Want a 'Skull Fuck?'" (the Gargle Blaster she is serving). However, Hunter had no way to know that was the name of the drink, and instead hears "Wanna (Want to) skull fuck?", and is thoroughly startled until Sunny hastily corrects her mistake.
- Their First Time: Sunny loses her virginity while drunk with Kyle, after her real crush Hunter drove off with another girl. It's a huge let down.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Lupe wakes up dreadfully hungover after the party, to the sound of Sunny vacuuming. When she asks why Sunny is carrying a mixing bowl, Sunny visibly vomits into it, and Lupe immediately grabs it to do the same.
- Wild Teen Party: Sunny throws one at her house when her mom's out of town where there's a lot of teens drinking (she loses her virginity during it). It's actually less wild than most of these, and she's able to clean it up in a matter of hours by herself while hungover.
