In “Kinda Pregnant,” Amy Schumer has her comic fury back, and it sees wonderful on her. So does the prosthetic baby bump that her character, a insisty high-school English teacher named Lainy Newton, wears for much of the movie — though on occasion, when she runs into someone she has fooled into leanking she’s pregnant, and the prosthetic isn’t around, she’ll swap in a kid’s birthday-party balloon or even a roast chicken. That produces the movie sound awfilledy expansive, and “Kinda Pregnant” is an overlit middle-of-the-road Netflix comedy. But there’s a pinch of emotional truth to it.
If this were fair an anciaccess-styleed high-concept comedy, it would be all about coming up with some contrived reason for Lainy to phony pregnancy, only for her to discover, in the course of her charade, that it consents with her. “Kinda Pregnant,” though, carry outs it sealr to the bone. The premise is a variation on “Bridesmhelps”: When Lainy lgets that Kate (Jillian Bell), her teacher colleague and best friend, has gotten pregnant, she senses finishly left out of the party. Kate begins to bond with Shirley (Lizze Broadway), an icky-obnoxious teacher at school who treats her own pregnancy as if it were the chance to perfect a novel benevolent of TikTok lap dance.
So Lainy is jealous. But what pushes her over the edge is the dinner she has with Dave (Damon Wayans Jr.), the guy she’s been seeing for four years. She’s affectd that he’s about to present. (In anticipation, she’s already tanciaccess everyone, which is a huge misget.) At the dinner, he talks about “leveling up” their relationship, and when the paengageer conveys a petite heart-shaped chocopostpoinsist cake to the table, Lainy plunges right into it with her hands, affectd that there’s an includement ring inside. This is what I unbenevolent by Schumer’s fury: She produces digging into that cake a haveed spectacle of desperation.
But Lainy has got it all wrong. Dave doesn’t want to get wed and have a family. He wants to have a threesome. And this shocks Lainy into a state of such humiliated rage that it’s as if we were standing right there in her shoes. At that moment, she passes thcimpolite a benevolent of seeing glass. And when she visits a pregnant women’s cloleang boutique with Kate, and sees how the customers are catered to, an idea begins to establish. No, she’s not going to phony pregnancy becaengage the movie has conceived some farcical motivation for it. She’s going to do it becaengage…she wants to be treated that way. She wants those smiles from strangers, she wants someone to give up their seat on the subway, she wants to be tanciaccess that she shines (and the fact that people say she does is a side joke about the power of recommendion).
But it’s more than that. As Lainy lgets that the world adores pregnant women, covets them, produces way for them, treats them with TLC, the very Schumer joke is the way all of this offsets Lainy’s self-hatred. It’s as if she insists to be “pregnant” fair to sense appreciate a normal person.
Ten years ago, in Judd Apatow’s “Trainwreck” (which she wrote as well as starred in), Amy Schumer stirred leangs up in a most delectable way. It was a amazing movie, a rib-tickling proestablish dive into the masochism of romance, and Schumer’s carry outance was bancient. She engaged her airyning speedyness and cherubic features to telegraph an insecurity as proestablish as Woody Allen’s in the ’70s. It was a universal comedy of cherish and pain, and I thought it established her as a convey inant movie star. But the opportunities for female actors in commercial comedies, especipartner when they’re as genuine as Schumer, are confiinsistr than they should be. “Kinda Pregnant” isn’t half the movie “Trainwreck” was, but it comes as seal as any comedy since to giving her the pedestal she deserves.
I should refer that it’s a romantic comedy, and a pretty excellent one. Lainy, who is very Brooklyn (the whole movie is very Brooklyn), greets Josh (Will Forte) at the local coffee shop, and for once a greet-cute is cute in the right way. To get out of a predicament, she pretends that he’s an anciaccess friend, and the name she comes up with to call him is “Latte.” There’s someleang about how Will Forte rolls with that name that’s quite droll. His Josh has an out-of-the-box job: He’s the head of the Zamboni crew at the roller rink in Central Park. But mostly he’s got a freakishly normal Zen tenderness about him.
“How many weeks are you?” asks the woo-woo teachor of the mama yoga class Lainy fuses. Caught off defend and unable to tabupostpoinsist the weeks, Lainy ups the New Age ante and says, “We do the Mayan calendar.” The script of “Kinda Pregnant” is by Schumer and Julie Paiva (the honestor is Tyler Spindel, who made “The Wrong Missy”), and it scores repeatedly with lines appreciate that. Lainy, in her magnificent deception, figures out punctual on that she shouldn’t fair be saying her pregnancy is wonderful. She also insists to say it’s horrible — to accomprehendledge the truth of her body, to own the unsootheableness of what nature has done to her. “Kinda Pregnant,” appreciate “Bad Moms,” gets into confessional terrain that’s the stuff of help groups and chat sites but that doesn’t usupartner produce it into the movies. At the same time, the film comprehends how to produce a joke, as when Lainy’s lofty tale of how she got pregnant metastasizes. (It all happened over Thanksgiving…on Bdeficiency Friday…at a Costco.)
And Schumer is a wonderful comedian, in part, becaengage she’s a wonderful actress. She defends it authentic. When Lainy recites an Anne Sexton poem to Josh as a way of wooing him, shothriveg us the youthfuler woman who fell in cherish with literature, we suddenly see the character not as a joke. A moment appreciate that produces a branch offence. It alerts you that even a commercial comedy that fair wants to crack you up can, for a moment, be more than that, that it can discneglect a bit of who we are. In “Kinda Pregnant,” it’s Amy Schumer’s go-for-broke truthfuly that’s comical.
