My big issue is that Jess never feels like a person. I found it hard to get a hold of her personality. It is hard not to view her as an opportunist in an idealistic sense.
She wants to be an advocate for causes, but her pregnancy and her decision to keep the child come across as her deciding to become an advocate for an issue rather than a desire to raise a child.
The film appeals to humanism and empathy, but I felt like the movie needed more of an overt arc for Jess. While the movie is obvious with its exposition, in terms of its dramatic turns, I was totally lost.
Compounding how hollow the film's message is is the way it completely objectifies disabled people. This is a movie about treating people as human beings, no matter their ability, yet the movie operates in a diegesis where disabled people are props for argument by non-disabled people.
There is a scene midway through the film in which a supporting character is criticised for objectifying her child as a 'literary device' in her advocacy. It might be an intentional foreshadowing of the way Jess is objectifying her own pregnancy, but if that is the case then the movie's message ends up feeling rather mean-spirited.
I am disinclined to think the movie is self-aware enough to recognise this irony since disabled characters are mostly offscreen, and never have active roles in the movie, or speak for themselves. At one point, Jess refers to a teacher with Downs Syndrome as an example of disabled people living fulfilled lives, but we never see her. She is just an example in an argument, not a person.
I think that is the key problem I had with the movie, and the main character's advocacy. Jess is advocating for an issue, but it never feels like she is advocating for people.
The movie keeps reinforcing how self-involved Jess s commitment to issues is. It might be a choice of the filmmakers, but it robs her argument with her friends of any moral foundation, which is only compounded by the film's ending.
Why are we watching this story if the main character does not believe the argument they are making? Where is the drama in that?
If the movie had Jess reckon with her own need to stand for something (perhaps have a character with Downs Syndrome call her out?), that would give this movie another layer of complexity. It would also act as a good stepping stone for the character's development.
In a movie with a stronger sense of characterisation and narrative development, having a compromised central character pushing an argument forward would be intriguing, but I left the movie confused rather than conflicted about the questions it thinks it is raising.
Apart from the confusion of its characterisation, I found myself distracted by the sloppiness of the scripting.
There are multiple mini-info dumps peppered throughout ("I have nausea - it's a form of morning sickness"; "Your Australian neighbour let me in") and moments of obvious subtext that just come off as really bad jokes (as our heroine contemplates having an abortion, another character asks her if she would like scrambled eggs for breakfast).
Most importantly, there is a didactic component to the arguments that means these scenes fail as drama. The big confrontation scene between the friends feels like contrived sides of a debate, rather than three people arguing.
There is a kernel of a great story in The Surrogate - sadly, the execution never does it justice.
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