“Babes” is a sticky-sweet comedy about two best friends bound together by an almost hive-inducing intimacy. The feature film directing debut of actor Pamela Adlon (“Better Things,” “Californication”), it’s a movie that hits you with the same surge of mixed emotions as a hug from a grubby toddler.

Childhood besties Dawn (Michelle Buteau) and Eden (Ilana Glazer, who wrote the script with Josh Rabinowitz) maintain a closeness that one might call admirable or suffocating. In the decades since their girlhoods in New York’s Astoria neighborhood, Dawn married, earned a medical degree, moved to the Upper West Side and birthed her first child — while Eden, a single yoga instructor, has barely matured. Eden’s fourth-floor walk-up boasts a full-size popcorn machine and a fast-food-style soda dispenser, the teenage dream.