‘Kinda Pregnant’ Review: Amy Schumer’s Fake Pregnancy Rom-Com Is Kinda Bad

For thousands of years, it’s been believed that laughter is the best medicine. Unfortunately, it appears that the laughs in the new Netflix comedy “Kinda Pregnant” have been recalled. What’s worse, the side effects include irritation, drowsiness and a very dull headache.

“Kinda Pregnant” stars Amy Schumer, who co-wrote the screenplay, as Lainy Newton. She’s a middle-aged schoolteacher who always dreamed of settling down and being a mother. She also sleeps on a futon with some kind of magical spring system that sends her flying across her apartment, which happens often enough (allegedly — we only see it the once) that she has to keep a pile of pillows in the landing zone. 

Believe it or not, this futon will be important later, although not for the right reasons.

Lainy thinks her boyfriend Dave (Damon Wayans Jr.) is about to propose, but it’s the beginning of a romantic comedy, so it’s all a misunderstanding and now she’s incredibly alone and wallowing in despair. We can tell she’s been disillusioned because she used to tell her students that “Romeo & Juliet” was a beautiful love story, and now she tells them it’s a tragedy about horny young lovers making bad mistakes (she doesn’t seem to be a very good English teacher).

Lainy is miserable, but her best friend Kate (Jillian Bell) is married and pregnant. Lainy should be happy for her but she can’t muster those emotions. Instead, Lainy obsesses and festers, until finally she tries on a fake pregnancy belly and realizes that everyone treats her better. So she keeps wearing it, which makes a new friendship with the actually-pregnant Megan (Brianne Howey) — and Lainy’s blossoming romance with Megan’s affable-yet-romantically-wounded brother, Josh (Will Forte) — very complicated because, you know, it’s all built on lies.

“Kinda Pregnant” is not the first comedy, romantic or otherwise, to rely on contrived deceptions for humor or tension. Sadly, it’s also not one of the better ones. While watching this weirdly lifeless and depressing trifle, which barely ekes out a chuckle every 20 minutes or so, one can’t help but wonder why “Kinda Pregnant” isn’t working. It’s certainly not the cast. They’ve been funny before and they’ll probably be funny again. Heck, Schumer and Forte have real, heartwarming chemistry together. A movie about their two characters falling in love, without any high-or-low concept at all, could have been disarming and satisfying on its own.

No, the problem with “Kinda Pregnant” is that Lainy’s deception requires a motivation, even in a contrived storyline, and motivation can make or break a comedy. The silliest screwball films can get away with a weird plot point because their characters exist in a world where weird things often happen. Katharine Hepburn’s character in “Bringing Up Baby” adopts a leopard because she’s the kind of person who’d adopt a leopard. Screwball comedies can also justify a deception through unlikely circumstances. Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis dress as women in “Some Like It Hot” because they witnessed a murder and had to come up with disguises (Lemmon’s character also seems to realize — at least, as much as any character in a production code comedy could — that they’re trans, which makes the story extra sweet and inspiring).

Lainy’s deception isn’t motivated by whimsy or plot, it’s motivated by misery. “Kinda Pregnant” deserves credit for trying to find some humanity inside a formulaic rom-com, but it goes so far into Lainy’s tragic headspace that her deception and subsequent shenanigans aren’t enjoyable, or funny. They’re cries for help. She’s not Katharine Hepburn in “Bringing Up Baby” or Jack Lemmon (or Tony Curtis) in “Some Like It Hot.” She’s Edward Norton in “Fight Club” — and that’s just not the same vibe.

Of course, if a film doesn’t work as a wacky comedy, we must also consider whether maybe it’s supposed to be a wacky comedy at all. Maybe we’re supposed to view this story through a very different lens. Clea DuVall’s “Happiest Season” was only superficially a rom-com, for example: Its old-fashioned and contrived romantic comedy tropes thinly masked an uncomfortably sad tale about how living a lie — in that case, pretending your girlfriend is just a friend because you’re uncomfortable coming out to your family — isn’t funny. “Happiest Season” is not a failed rom-com, it’s a subversive and incisive dark comedy that pulls apart the innards of a rom-com and reveals its uncomfortable findings.

Hey, remember the futon I mentioned earlier? I told you it’d be important later, but I meant it was important to this review, not to “Kinda Pregnant’s” plot. Director Tyler Spindel (“The Out-Laws”) dumps that moment, the dopiest kind of slapstick into the film’s first few minutes, which sets the stage for yuck-yucks. We are reminded, every few scenes, that we’re supposed to be enjoying superficial comedic hijinks like pratfalls and embarrassing sex, which undermines the serious dramatic undertones of Julie Paiva and Schumer’s screenplay — which in turn makes those hijinks a lot less funny. 

There are multiple scenes of Amy Schumer in slapstick situations that would seriously endanger the life of her (alleged) baby. That can work if the tone is absurd, but “Kinda Pregnant” is just serious enough that the horrified reactions of Schumer’s onlookers register and Schumer’s personal embarrassment doesn’t. Then there’s another scene where a small child intentionally stabs a (supposedly) pregnant woman in the stomach with a knife, and the audience is somehow supposed to think it’s hilarious instead of profoundly terrifying on multiple levels. That kid isn’t a laugh riot. That kid is a potential serial killer.

There’s a decent rom-com hidden beneath “Kinda Pregnant’s” tonal calamities, and a decent tragedy hidden behind all the desperate buffoonery. But the film’s best qualities are hidden far, far too well. Except, that is, for Will Forte’s lovely sad sack boyfriend, who — as a character and as an actor — kinda deserves a better romance than this. 

“Kinda Pregnant” is now streaming on Netflix.

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