Kinda Pregnant

Grade: C

Kinda Pregnant’s main plot point is a flimsy, half-baked, under-explained idea. There’s no character development, and it’s mostly an opportunity for Amy Schumer to overact, mug for the camera, and melt down. She’s a talented comedian, but can’t seem to find her stride in the movies. 

She plays Lainy, a high school English Lit teacher. Don’t get me started on the loosy-goosiness of this school, and how the staff can get away with anything. She’s about 40, with a ticking biological clock. She thinks things are finally going to happen when she hears that her boyfriend Dave (Damon Wayans Jr.) wants to take her out to a nice dinner, and has an important question for her. The question he pops is “Will you have a threesome with me? I’ve already picked someone out.”

Obviously, they break up over this. Meanwhile, her best friend Kate (Jillian Bell), who is also a teacher at the school, finds out she is with child. It’s extremely contrived, but long story short: Lainy is jealous, they are out shopping for maternity stuff, Lainy tries on a fake pregnant belly, somebody thinks she is an expectant mother while she has it on, and she decides to keep it and pretend to be pregnant.

“What a tangled web we weave” and all that. As she can only be “play-pregnant” around certain people, some farcical situations come up. There’s a scene where her belly catches fire. It’s no bigger than a candle’s flame, and she’s a few steps away from a sink, but instead, she dramatically stops, drops, and rolls as if there’s no baby there and it’s just rubber. Trainwreck, another Schumer vehicle, had her starring opposite Bill Hader. Kinda Pregnant puts her opposite another SNL alum – Will Forte. He has been very effective on the silver screen, particularly in Strays and especially in the brilliant Nebraska – one of the best movies of the 2010s. Here, he is painted into the corner of the romantic love interest. He has the usual arc. They really like each other, then he tells her she needs help when the truth comes out, then maybe you can guess. New Zealand actress Urzila Carlson could be very funny in another movie. She plays the so-called guidance counselor, who needs the most guidance.

The final scene is absolutely preposterous. It takes place at the school, beginning with a kid in the class announcing that something’s coming, long before he could have seen it. What happens next is utterly irresponsible and unbelievable in every possible way, and it’s capped off with some destruction. It’s not funny. It’s just things being damaged. None of what transpires would have been allowed to go on. It’s the last of a few scenes at the school where anything goes and there’s apparently no boss. Was there even a principal at this school? Was there even a principal on this movie?

Grade: C