Kinda Pregnant (2025)
Directed by: Tyler Spindel
Premise: A single and childless woman (Amy Schumer) feels isolated when her married best friend (Jillian Bell) gets pregnant. She uses an artificial baby bump to fake having a pregnancy of her own.
What Works: A lot of media tends to idealize pregnancy and motherhood but Kinda Pregnant addresses some of the unglamorous aspects. In particular, the film dramatizes the way the culture tends to deferentially treat pregnant women while ignoring their actual emotional needs. People are nice to Schumer’s character as soon as she begins wearing the fake baby bump but her interactions with pregnant women reveal the way they are isolated and condescended to. Kinda Pregnant is a little-white-lie story and although it follows a predicable pattern the way Schumer’s character ends up in that lie is credible, at least in context. She’s lonely and at the end of her emotional rope and circumstances snowball fast enough that she gets stuck in that lie. The best part of Kinda Pregnant is the relationship between Amy Schumer’s character and her love interest played by Will Forte. There is a likable sweetness between them and Schumer and Forte make us want to see the couple get together. The platonic female friendships are similarly appealing. Schumer’s character becomes alienated from her oldest friend (Jillian Bell) while making a new friend (Brianne Howey) under false pretenses and the sincerity and loneliness of Schumer’s character are convincing.
What Doesn’t: The extent to which Kinda Pregnant explores and lampoons motherhood and pregnancy is limited. It acknowledges the isolation some women experience but it doesn’t really do much with that idea. Kinda Pregnant is inconsistently funny. There are some laughs but the comedy is very hit or miss. The story relies on familiar storytelling conventions and there are few surprises. More than that, Kinda Pregnant borrows a lot from Bridesmaids. A few set pieces and plot points are lifted right out of the 2011 movie, just swapping pregnancy for matrimony. Like a lot of Netflix original movies, Kinda Pregnant looks terrible. The cinematography is often flat. In addition to being ugly, the visual style suspends the reality of the film by making everything look like a sitcom. And like many sitcoms, Kinda Pregnant is economically disconnected from reality. Schumer’s character is a middle school teacher but she and everyone else live in extraordinary homes with designer clothes and expensive furnishings.
Disc extras: Available on Netflix.
Bottom Line: Kinda Pregnant feels like an elongated sketch from Amy Schumer’s eponymous television show. It is occasionally funny and the romance and friendships are likable enough to make it passable but the movie also feels like a missed opportunity to make something more incisive and subversive.
Episode: #1038 (March 9, 2025)