Man, I don’t even know where to start. First, yes, I know that Amy Schumer is an absolutely dogshit Zionist but this is a Netflix movie so it’s not like I’m actively enriching her by watching it. Second, why would I actively seek this fucking thing out? Adam Sandler is a producer on it and I have a kind of grim fascination with the arc of his career. His career has been peppered with movies that he produced, and doesn’t star in, but they’re generally vehicles for his less talented friends that have been multi-decade hangers on. You really think enough people give a shit about David Spade that funding got put together for The Wrong Missy without Sandler?
These movies are like sour milk versions of Sandler’s manbaby schtick. Whereas Sandler has grudgingly started to mature in his films his bros generally just play petulant boobs even though they’re pushing 60.
Kinda Pregnant was a higher priority of interest because it is one of those rare Sandler produced vehicles that acknowledge women exist and that they might want to watch a movie. The first of which was 2008’s The House Bunny which paired Anna Faris, Colin Hanks and Emma Stone with the writing team from Legally Blonde. Yes, it was very rough around the edges but it gave its leads room to flex and demonstrate they were capable of more. (Waves in the general direction of Emma Stone’s career.)
The next such picture was 2023’s You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah. Understated, warm and authentic Sandler’s Happy Madison found ways of centering the perspectives of the kind of people it was depicting at every turn instead of rounding out the movie with B-plots that center his idiot friends or shamelessly nepo behind the camera hires. Overshadowed by Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret released the same year it continues to be a shame this hasn’t found a broader audience.
This brings us at last to Kinda Pregnant. It splits the difference between The House Bunny being peppered with Sandler’s army of bros in background roles and Bat Mitzvah’s commitment to centering the experience of those depicted. The results are, predictably, mixed.
The biggest nepo hire issue is Sandler’s nephew, Tyler Spindel, as director. The movie moves in fits and starts with pacing that seems either glacial or rushed depending on the moment. Spindel never prioritizes giving secondary characters room to breathe so they just kind of come off as shrill cartoons. In particular Urzila Carlson gets no room to breathe and comes off like a studio note that read “more like Rebel Wilson please.” The only secondary character performance to dodge this is Damon Wayans Jr. as Amy Schumer’s character’s ex. He’s given a late in film speech about “I remember when I fell out of love with you” that rings as authentic and vulnerable like the kind of thing someone might share with an ex if the fire dimmed but they still cared for them.
Here’s where I’ll doubtlessly get into trouble the central performances are mostly good and the central conceit is sound. Kinda Pregnant really nails the cultural toll of our constantly reinforced natalism. People who can give birth have it constantly reinforced to them that there is nothing more good or worthy that they can do with their lives but the larger, easily accessible conversation on the toll of motherhood usually dismisses the cost with a flip “but it’s just so amazing to be a mom.” It’s as if motherhood is a secret sorority and public facing messaging falls back on extolling the benefits. Last year’s Nightbitch fell into this trap by giving us erratic portrayals of characters surrounding the central mother, motivation for the central character that rarely reached beyond “I am tired and sad” in the writing, and a climax that dismisses all of the cost of maternity for the magic of being a mom.
Writer Julie Paiva’s script for Kinda Pregnant sprang from a real life incident where she was shopping with a pregnant friend and tried on the empathy bump and felt a desire to keep it. The cultural natalist drive drew her. Paiva exercised restraint and didn’t give in to her desire but what if she did? And that is how Kinda Pregnant was, uh, born.
Amy Schumer’s character Lainy is cut from the same cloth as the usual Happy Madison lead. She’s petty, selfish, childish and quick to enrage. Where Sandler has succeeded most in broad comedy that he stars in or produces are films that remind the viewer that those character traits are universal and hidden within us all. Sure, Happy Gilmore is loving grandson who’s life is an expression of the grief from losing his parents but he’s also a vainglorious dickhead who spends most his movie refusing to acknowledge dreams can change shape between fits of inappropriate anger. Schumer’s Lainy is similar. She’s introduced to have lost her mother at six years old and has spent most of her life fixated on motherhood fantasy to the detriment of all else personally and professionally.
It’s easy to hand wave this but how many people exist, subconsciously, as an effort by their parents to dull some older pain? Children are born every year that exist as license for people to redo their childhood now as the parent or to make sense of a loss and with our weird natalist culture we make these unspoken subconscious benefits of parenting hyper competitive. I’m gonna get over more childhood trauma than you!!! At one point, a despondent Lainy admits to her friend since childhood, played by Jillian Bell, that she hoped that she would never be able to get pregnant and ultimately just adopt a ferret.
The real appeal of the film is Schumer’s character as interloper in the world of the pregnant. At first she’s overjoyed at the empty praise and extra attention that she’s feted with when wearing the empathy bump. Free coffees and total strangers telling her “you are so beautiful” on the subway. Then she meets Megan, played marvelously by Brianne Howey, at a mommy yoga class. Both leave after some slapstick and as their friendship evolves Megan treats Lainy, obviously, as a member of the mom sorority and speaks candidly about her frustrations and fears as a mother. When she introduces Lainy to her son she says “he nearly tore my asshole open.” Later, in a particularly good sequence, Schumer and Howey are sitting on the floor of a bathroom and Howey recounts the dangerous and troubling story of her son’s birth. Her quiet, sincere delivery on “I was losing a lot of blood” underscores that culturally these kinds of stories are tamped down so we can prioritize our zealous desire to make all women want to be mommies; damn the cost. After relating the story Megan asks Lainy, “can we just sit here for five minutes?” She’s exhausted, overwhelmed and doesn’t often have an ear that makes room for her.
Swinging back around to Marielle’s Heller’s Nightbitch. It failed to connect audiences with the pain and trauma of pregnancy and early childhood because so much of it glossed over and the ultimate resolution of the film felt like a hand wave about the personal cost. It’s fine, it seemed to say. You’ll be a mom. Megan is Virgil and Lainy is Dante in this story the cost of motherhood and it never loses sight that motherhood can be hell.
Yes, there’s a romantic plot featuring Will Forte and Forte is suitably charming as a guy going through some stuff living in his sister’s garage. Of course the sister is Howey but it’s fine. The main purpose of Forte’s character and the focus on Schumer’s character’s professional life as a high school teacher is so that after her tour of The Inferno she can be shown returning to her professional and love life with renewed zeal after having motherhood myopia shaken from. It manages to achieve a feat which I doubt will be replicated in film which is a protagonist breathlessly quoting bell hooks and then riding off on a Zamboni to their happy ending.
Should you watch Kinda Pregnant? It’s a mixed bag and mileage is going to very but despite weird pacing and paper thin supporting characters it manages to do what multiple recent films haven’t which is to build empathy motherhood without ever pulling any punches about its awful moments.