In the opening sequence of Tyler Spindel’s Netflix comedy, Kinda Pregnant, two little girls can be seen playing with their dolls as an expecting mother and her partner. Screaming through the fake pain and fear, a young Kate pauses to ask her friend Lainey why they always have to “play moms” everyday considering she doesn’t even want to be one. Lainey instinctively replies—almost as if she’s been prepped with a script—with “never say that. Being a mom is the greatest thing a human being can do.”
Right then and there, I wondered which angle this script would go. Was I going to endure 98 minutes of being preached at regarding why women should strive to be mothers? Or would this take a surprising turn, offering layers of nuance and complexity with respect to the uncertainties of motherhood? To my surprise, Kinda Pregnant is neither. It’s exactly what you’d expect from an Amy Schumer film: surface-level thematic storytelling and stiff comedy.
Schumer stars as the older version of Lainey, a love-crazed middle school teacher who can’t wait to be a mother someday. She’s fully expecting that to happen soon, as her boyfriend of 4 years, Dave (Damon Wayans Jr.), has been dropping hints at a proposal. Meanwhile, her best friend Kate (Jillian Bell) is living a mundane life with her husband Mark (Joel David Moore), who she seemingly hates. When she finds out she’s pregnant, Kate is sure this will complicate her relationship with her unenthusiastic husband. But at least she has her best friend Lainey.
Kinda Pregnant is predictable and unfunny.
This is the beginning of a complicated chapter in their friendship, however. Instead of a proposal, Dave and Lainey part ways. And after finding out Kate is pregnant, living out her dream, Lainey isolates herself away from Kate and begins sporting a fake baby bump. She pushes her fantasy further by attending prenatal yoga classes, where she meets expecting mother Megan (Brianne Hower). As their friendship blossoms and they bond over the complications of pregnancy, Lainey begins to form a romantic relationship with Megan’s brother Josh (Will Forte)… all while sporting that baby bump!
You see where this is going, right? One lie evolves to a point of no return, promising to deliver complicated relationship dynamics and laughs in between all the chaos that ensues. But no. We don’t get to have an entertaining and insightful movie about the pressures we put on women in the pursuit of motherhood. Instead, we’re stuck with an unfunny, surface-level examination of excessive lies and poor self-love in a way that makes me question how this could ever get green-lit.
There are times, albeit very few, when Kinda Pregnant does show promise. Most of these moments come with Hower’s Megan, as she offers a realistic view on motherhood and pregnancy in ways films won’t dare to show these days. [Still so thankful for you, Tully]. But these sequences are normally short-lived. Challenging the central character’s fantasy also isn’t allowed because… reasons. After all, you can’t get too serious in a Netflix comedy, right?
It’s best to view Schumer’s latest as mindless entertainment.
However you choose to look at Spindel’s feature—mindless entertainment, cute rom-com, something to put on while you drift away to sleep—we can all agree that it’s simply not Schumer’s best work. One weird decision after another kept this film from reaching its full potential. And I’m not just talking about the weird choice to mention raunchy content to middle schoolers or screaming “get rid of it” to Kate as an abortion gag for laughs. The setup of Kinda Pregnant is mediocrity, where it prefers to address interesting themes with half-ass humor and timid commentary.
Perhaps that was the goal: to just keep it simple and light. It may also explain why Schumer’s performance felt so restrained. Was she not fully invested in the story? Or was this more an issue of whether she could tackle and balance the variations of emotion that the character needed? Whatever the case, I truly want to see Schumer get back to her true talented form. Here, even from the opening sequence, it all went downhill. To be frank, there was no hill. Kinda Pregnant is just a flat script that can’t say anything meaningful, memorable, or funny.
Check out the trailer for Netflix’s Kinda Pregnant, streaming now.
