Certificate: 15

Running Time: 100 mins

UK Distributor: Netflix

UK Release Date: 5 February 2025

WHO’S IN KINDA PREGNANT?

Amy Schumer, Jillian Bell, Will Forte, Damon Wayans Jr., Brianne Howey, Chris Geere, Alex Moffat, Joel David Moore, Lizze Broadway, Urzila Carlson, Francis Benhamou

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Tyler Spindel (director), Amy Schumer (writer, producer), Julie Paiva (writer), Kevin Grady, Tim Herlihy, Judit Maull, Alex Saks, Adam Sandler, Molly Sims and Elias Thomas (producers), Rupert Gregson-Williams (composer), Stuart Dryburg (cinematographer), Tom Costain and J.J. Titone (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

A woman (Schumer) pretends to be pregnant for attention…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON KINDA PREGNANT?

My, how times have changed for Amy Schumer. Once on top of the comedy world with her hit Emmy-winning sketch show Inside Amy Schumer and a Golden Globe-nominated lead turn in director Judd Apatow’s Trainwreck, the comedian and actor has since fallen out of favour with the public after allegations of stealing jokes, has been targeted by right-wing media for her outspoken politics, and thanks to roles in far less rewarding comedies like I Feel Pretty, Snatched and Unfrosted, has become far less relevant among Hollywood’s A-list.

As if things weren’t bad enough, she now has to rely on Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions and director Tyler Spindel – previously behind the excruciatingly bad 2020 comedy The Wrong Missy – to bring her latest project Kinda Pregnant to life. And, lo and behold, the final product is exactly what you may imagine a Sandler-ised Amy Schumer movie would be like under Spindel’s direction, which is to say, not very good at all.

Schumer (also a co-writer with Julie Paiva) stars as Lainy, a schoolteacher who wants nothing more than to have a baby with her boyfriend Dave (Damon Wayans Jr.), only for that dream to die when he carelessly suggests a threesome instead of proposing like she had been expecting. She’s dealt an extra blow when her childhood friend Kate (Jillian Bell) announces that she’s pregnant, which sends Lainy into a spiral of jealousy that leads to her donning a fake baby bump so that she can bask in the attention and royal treatment that everyone in this universe seems to give anyone who is expecting. She soon strikes up a friendship with actual pregnant lady Megan (Brianne Howey), and even ignites a charming romance with Megan’s brother, hapless Zamboni driver Josh (Forte), but eventually the lie that Lainy is literally carrying around with her begins to snowball until, naturally, it gets out of control.

The main issue with the script for Kinda Pregnant isn’t necessarily how mind-numbingly predictable it is, as you can tell from the moment Schumer’s character begins wearing her fake bump that the truth will out at some point, as it often does in films centred around a big fat lie. It isn’t even how desperately unfunny it is, with plenty of physical gags that border on ridiculous and some set-pieces where the biggest jokes are heavily telegraphed, in between scenes that rely on people acting overly weird or simply shouting every other line for comedic effect, as is the Happy Madison way.

Rather, it’s the fact that such a badly constructed script has come from Schumer herself, who along with co-writer Julie Paiva (making her feature writing debut here) gravely mishandles the comedic potential of such a barmy premise, a far cry from her earlier and much funnier works ten or so years ago. Instead of her usual fierce commentary on everyday female struggles, as she once so brilliantly did on Inside Amy Schumer, she opts for humour of the lowest-common-denominator variety, where fart noises dominate pregnant yoga classes, people discuss their anatomy like it’s everybody’s business, and some obnoxious stereotypes pop in to grind the movie to a halt, including a particularly vapid Gen-Z fellow teacher and expectant mother played by Lizze Broadway. Whatever comedic genius Schumer clearly has within her is not present within Kinda Pregnant, which signals that she’s either lost her touch or she’s allowed external forces (hi, Sandler) to take control for the sake of their own audience. I sincerely hope it’s the latter, though it wouldn’t surprise me if it was indeed the former.

Making it more frustrating is that every now and then, you can see where a version of this script could genuinely work. As simplistic and borderline nonsensical as it can often be, Schumer’s depiction of pregnancy and the very real emotions that expectant women go through are touched upon, albeit very lightly, which given the writer’s own publicised struggles with birthing and raising a child does feel like it’s coming for a genuine-ish place. There are also some good scenes between her and Will Forte, who is genuinely charming as the love interest who’s conceptually nothing that hasn’t been done before but still has his moments that are effective in their own way.

Such moments, though, are fleeting in an otherwise laugh-less bore where the plot is as predictable as can be, the comedy is flatter than paper, and the lack of logic is beyond frustrating, for this is a world where the main character intentionally starts a fire in her own classroom, to where the entire school is evacuated as the firefighters arrive, and she’s still back at work the next day like no fireable (ahem) incident ever occurred. Part of me really wants to believe that it’s the Happy Madison of it all, not to mention the lifeless and overly saturated direction that Spindel gives here – which, admittedly, is a minor step up from The Wrong Missy, but not by much – but there’s a growing worry that this is purely Schumer operating on a level that’s far beneath the talent that she clearly has, whether as a performer or as a writer, and that Kinda Pregnant is a depressing sign of how far this comedian has fallen.

Hopefully she’ll bounce back, as people often tend to do, but for now it seems that Amy Schumer is stuck in a seriously concerning place that someone of her talent doesn’t deserve to belong.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Kinda Pregnant is a severe comedic misfire from star and co-writer Amy Schumer, who relies on unfunny lowbrow humour and heavily predictable plotting that is a far cry from her past successes, but funnily enough more than fitting for the Happy Madison brand that she’s regretfully allowed to take full control.

Click here or check below to find where you can stream Kinda Pregnant now, thanks to JustWatch!