‘Kinda Pregnant’ Movie Review: Amy Schumer Is Still Kinda Funny In Moronic Fake Preggers Comedy
Photo from Netflix
From Jeremy Kibler
Deception is a classic hook in the name of farce. It can test the audience’s intelligence by seeing how far they’ll believe a lie or a charade that a movie character can sustain. The Amy Schumer vehicle Kinda Pregnant tries to pull off that balance with a character who launches an extremely crazy scheme pretending to be an expectant mother (like you do), but insulting our intelligence probably wasn’t part of the plan.
Coming from Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison production, Kinda Pregnant starts as pretty standard sitcom stuff with some very funny moments, both of the verbal and physical variety. It’s kinda shrill, kinda annoying, and then occasionally after its high-concept plot gets set in motion, it’s admittedly more diverting than not as a lightweight, hey-it’s-on-Netflix throwaway. Do with that what you will as a recommendation.
Schumer (who also co-wrote the script with Julie Paiva) plays Lainy Newton, a Brooklyn fortysomething and English middle school teacher who has always dreamt of being a mother. When she expects Dave (Damon Wayans Jr.), her boyfriend of four years, to finally propose at a fancy restaurant, that doesn’t happen, leaving Lainy to go off the deep end (teaching her students “Romeo and Juliet” makes her extremely cynical and the lesson ends in a trash fire). Lainy spirals even more when best friend Kate (Jillian Bell) tells her she’s pregnant. This leads to Lainy checking out maternity clothes with Kate and strapping on a foam belly bump for shits and giggles. Looking pregnant makes everyone in the world treat her better, so Lainy pretends to be pregnant. She even meets cute with a nice Zamboni driver named Josh (Will Forte), who ends up being the brother to Lainy’s newest friend, the actually pregnant Megan (Brianne Howey). It’s not a matter of “if” but “when,” and when Lainy comes clean that she’s not actually with child, will anyone remain in her life?
Directed by Sandler’s nephew Tyler Spindel (The Out-Laws, The Wrong Missy), the film swings so wildly in tone. Within just the first few minutes, there’s a random slapstick bit with Lainy’s very springy sofa bed sending her in the air. It has nothing to do with anything and never comes back as a setup to a payoff, ultimately feeling desperate. There’s also a running joke that Lainy thinks she has a mustache, even though she doesn’t. Characters act less like people and more like pawns to the plot, and then in small, quieter moments (like when Laney recites Anne Sexton poetry to Josh), they are recognizably human.
Schumer is at least playing a different kind of persona than the boozy, blowsy type she honed so honestly and hilariously in Trainwreck. Then again, Lainy can be infuriating as a protagonist to follow. It’s comparatively better than Munchausen syndrome where someone fakes an illness for sympathy and attention, but faking a pregnancy just makes Lainy look dishonest, self-involved and, apparently, bored. One wishes the film just didn’t Lainy off the hook so easily in the end.
When Schumer goes big with a meltdown or an embarrassing fall down the stairs that she tries to make look cute or smooth, she is a game comedian. The wacky, let’s-keep-this-lie-going situations become painfully contrived and broader than broad, like when Lainy (thinking she’s safe at work) grabs a birthday balloon from her classroom and shoves it under her dress as a makeshift baby bump. Something similar happens again, only with a roast turkey for Lainy to smuggle under her dress. The film certainly gets mileage out of how many times Lainy can keep injuring her fake baby bump in front of those who think she’s pregnant, so of course her belly gets set on fire at one point. The funniest bit is when Megan’s toddler runs around with a knife and then runs up to Lainy (who’s over for dinner), stabbing her fake belly.
Brianne Howey (Netflix’s Ginny & Georgia) is an authentic bright spot as Megan, and Will Forte does have a natural chemistry with Schumer (perhaps they could write something together in the future). As if Rebel Wilson couldn’t make it, New Zealand comedian Urzila Carlson earns some brash laughs as the school’s brazenly inappropriate guidance counselor, as does Lizze Broadway, doing Alanna Ubach as over-the-top, always-live-on-social teacher Shirley who’s pregnant for real.
The comedy amuses from moment to moment, but the post-Bridesmaids friendship at the core gets a little stranded in favor of the moronic plotting. And once the film is over, Lainy probably needs a psych evaluation rather than a happy ending.
Rating: 2.5/5
Kinda Pregnant is currently streaming on Netflix.
