A screwball comedy premise is a broad yet delicate thing. It has to be extreme enough to inspire big laughs, but also recognizable enough to exist in the real world. And it helps greatly if the characters at the center of it are likable enough that we’ll root for them to get away with their crazy schemes.
This is one of the many major problems with “Kinda Pregnant:” Amy Schumer’s character is such an obnoxious narcissist that we don’t care whether she pulls off her plan to pretend she’s expecting. And attempts to soften her and reveal her vulnerabilities only result in wild tonal swings and heart-tugging that’s unearned.
Schumer also co-wrote the script with Julie Paiva, which consists of raunchy jokes about farting during pre-natal yoga and fumbling during oral sex. Mentions of various orifices, dry nipples and threesomes aren’t exactly offensive, but they’re presented with the blunt intention of shocking us: You won’t believe how R-rated this R-rated comedy can be!
Last year’s “Babes,” starring Ilana Glazer and Michelle Buteau as best friends navigating pregnancy with hilariously brutal honesty, was much more effective in exploring how women truly talk about such intimate matters. Similarly, “Trainwreck,” which put Schumer on the map as a comic film star a decade ago, found that rare combination of inappropriate humor and legitimate sweetness. Then again, Judd Apatow, a veteran director with strong sensibilities, was at the helm.
Tyler Spindel, director of the previous Adam Sandler-produced Netflix comedies “The Out-Laws” and “The Wrong Missy” (and Sandler’s nephew), lacks the necessary touch to make this balance work, both within individual scenes and throughout the pacing of the whole movie. A bit works here or there, but most fall flat.
Schumer’s character, Lainy, is desperate and shrill from the start, as we see from a flashback in which she and her childhood best friend, Kate, are playing mommies giving birth in the schoolyard. Decades later, Lainy is a Brooklyn middle school teacher still yearning to be a mother, and she feels jealous when Kate (Jillian Bell) gets pregnant first. Adding to her woes, Lainy is stunned when her longtime boyfriend (Damon Wayans Jr.) doesn’t propose to her over a romantic dinner like she expects he will. This scene, in which Lainy smears chocolate cake all over her face, rips off her sparkly dress and starts shrieking in the middle of a crowded restaurant, is an early indication of the film’s tendency to confuse loud with funny.
But when Lainy tries on a foam baby bump for funsies while helping Kate shop for maternity clothes, the enthusiastic reaction she receives from strangers is so uplifting that she just sorta decides to go with it. Taking the bump out for a spin, she attends a pre-natal yoga class, where she meets Megan (Brianne Howey), a legitimately pregnant woman who’s so genuine and self-possessed, she can’t help but want to be friends with her. (Howey’s performance is the best part of “Kinda Pregnant.” Particularly in one confessional scene on the bathroom floor, she brings a warm, authentic presence that’s totally engaging and feels plucked from a different, better movie.)
Around the same time, Lainy meets cute with a nice guy named Josh (Will Forte) at her neighborhood coffee house. Josh doesn’t think Lainy is pregnant. Josh also happens to be Megan’s brother, who’s staying with her in the family’s garage after a bad break-up. Madcap hilarity theoretically ensues.
And so the inherent comic tension comes not from whether these people will learn the truth, but how, and how soon. Adding to the potential mayhem is the fact that Lainy isn’t “pregnant” at work, where supporting characters played by Urzila Carlson and Lizze Broadway are little more than a collection of brash quirks. This is true of most of the peripheral figures here; Megan’s husband, for example, has a weird, unfunny obsession with Jada Pinkett Smith.
Pretty much everyone in this movie is annoying all the time, and Spindel yanks us around in tone from one moment to the next: wacky, then romantic, back to wacky, then dramatic, before ending on a disastrously wacky note. Every new situation, whether it’s shopping at Toys “R” Us, a school field trip or a pre-natal therapy workshop, provides the set-up for wild humor that doesn’t land.
The movie that came to mind quite a bit while watching ‘Kinda Pregnant” was the 1945 classic “Christmas in Connecticut.” It’s not an exact comparison, but it’s also about a woman who’s crafted a big lie about idealized womanhood. Barbara Stanwyck stars as a celebrated food columnist who writes about her idyllic existence on the farm with her perfect husband and baby. She’s actually single, living in a Manhattan apartment and ordering takeout every night. But she must concoct this life to impress a returning war hero as a favor to her publisher.
What “Christmas in Connecticut” does so deftly is offer richly detailed characters and let the comedy build, slowly and steadily with expert staging and pacing. Placing the thoroughly charming Stanwyck and her impeccable timing front and center certainly helps. We’re on her side from the beginning. So by the time her ruse is revealed, we’re invested in how the people she’s come to care about will react–and how she will make amends.
Maybe it’s unfair to compare a prime example of the genre with a Netflix movie from Happy Madison Production, but this kind of female-centric storytelling is possible, in all its relatable messiness, and we deserve it.
On Netflix now.
