Amy Schumer Snuck A Thoughtful Examination of Motherhood Into An Adam Sandler-Produced Comedy

Comedy filmmakers love a big lie. From Fargo to Tootsie to Overboard to Mrs. Doubtfire, the genre is packed with stories about a beleaguered protagonist coming up with an outlandish claim that quickly grows beyond their control. So Kinda Pregnant, out today on Netflix, is joining a long tradition: Lainy (Amy Schumer) is mistaken for a pregnant woman, decides to run with it, then makes a new friend and has to keep up the ruse. Schumer, who co-wrote the screenplay, is known for her joke-dense stand-up sets and for sexually frank movies like Trainwreck. The film has been released under Adam Sandler’s banner, Happy Madison, home of such past hits as, well, Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison. So when you hear that Sandler and Schumer have teamed up on a comedy about pregnancy, you might get a particular picture of what it’s going to be like. But here’s what to expect when you’re expecting Kinda Pregnant to be based on broad, gross-out humor: for your preconceptions to be disproved. 

Ever since they were kids, motherless best friends Lainy (played at age 7 by Jayne Sowers) and Kate (Julianna Layne, also playing the character as a child) have known what they wanted: Lainy was so eager to have children that she made Kate play “Mom” in the schoolyard, even though Kate didn’t think she ever wanted to be a mom herself. As adults, they’re still best friends, and still at school, now as teachers. Kate (Jillian Bell) is married, and Lainy is pretty sure her longtime boyfriend Dave (Damon Wayans Jr.) is about to propose. Things don’t go as Lainy predicted, so it’s an extra gut punch when Kate tells her she’s pregnant — and, on top of that, so is Shirley (Lizze Broadway), an annoying young teacher at their school whose idea of connecting with her older colleagues is to blurt “Golden Girls” at them.

Lainy’s first lie is to get out of a chance encounter with Shirley at her local coffee shop by claiming she’s with the guy in front of her in line. She panics and says his name is Latte, but he is, in fact, Josh (Will Forte), and they have a flirty conversation about, among other things, the fact that they’re wearing identical Old Navy hoodies. Then Lainy and Kate check out a maternity store that sends Lainy spiraling again. When Lainy’s trying on a sweater using a strap-on belly bump, the clerk assumes she’s actually pregnant and fusses over her in a way Lainy may really need right now. Lainy hustles out with the bump, and when she grows jealous of Kate and Shirley’s new bond, she decides to get a little more attention by putting it on and going to a prenatal yoga class. There, she meets Megan (Brianne Howey), pregnant with her second baby and stressed about how it’s going. A dinner invitation to Megan’s house is the first stage of the two becoming more enmeshed, requiring Lainy to continue living a double life as a brave single mother-to-be, and as a non-pregnant person desperate not to be found out.

Some of Kinda Pregnant does land squarely on brand for Happy Madison, starting with the many ways Lainy’s fake bump is assaulted; the scenes from the trailer, which show her falling on it at yoga and setting it on fire with a stove flame, are only the beginning.

We also get big stars like Laura Benanti and Luis Guzmán showing up for tiny cameos to sell non-sequitur jokes. (In the latter case, the joke is so small and random that I’m not sure Guzmán wasn’t just walking by the outer-borough neighborhood they happened to be filming in and did it as a goof.) Urzila Carlson, a stand-up comic best known to me as a panelist on the second and so far best season of Taskmaster NZ, is a spectacular addition to the Sandler extended universe. As Fallon, the guidance counselor at the school where Lainy, Kate and Shirley teach, Carlson drifts through her scenes hitting her vape, hassling everyone (telling one student he smells like cocaine and another that his test results are back: “You’re stupid”), and ending up on the wrong end of a gender-reveal party piñata when Lainy goes after it a little too hard. The typical Happy Madison fan might reflexively avoid a movie that is so female-focused, but any who find their way through the door will find gags that cross gender lines.

And if they stick around, those fans will get exposed to some indignities of pregnancy beyond the one most male screenwriters have reminded us about since Knocked Up: Yes, we all know laboring parents sometimes poop during childbirth, so no, Schumer and co-writer Julie Paiva don’t bother mentioning that. We do, however, hear that Megan’s been suffering with dry nipples and that her first child Connor (Duke McCloud) nearly tore her asshole open; in addition to morning sickness, Kate has found herself much hornier than usual, masturbating to unusual fare like The Golden Bachelor. 

But at its heart, Kinda Pregnant is about the importance of mothers finding connection, sharing their stories and anxieties. Lainy is hurt that Kate is drawn to talk about her pregnancy with Shirley, even as Lainy is providing the same function for Megan, who’s worried about having as hard a time postpartum with her new baby as she did when Connor was an infant. Megan and Kate both have partners — Megan’s husband Steve is played by the very funny Chris Geere, formerly of You’re the Worst — but Kate is worried that Mark isn’t excited enough about being a dad. Steve, meanwhile, is such an over-the-top ally to women that he spends his birthday at a live Red Table Talk event, but he still apparently tunes out Megan yelling to him to stop Connor running around the house with a knife, continuing to lie on the couch while she makes dinner. (It’s a good thing Lainy’s bump isn’t real when, unbeknownst to both his parents, Connor stabs her in it.) 

Megan is a little sheepish about asking Lainy to join her for a meeting of a prenatal depression support group, but when the moderator encourages attendees to yell about what’s troubling them, it gives the non-pregnant Lainy a new perspective on the experience she’s been dreaming of having since her own childhood. As our protagonist, Lainy and her search for the kind of love that could lead to the family she’s dreamed of are a major part of the film. But Kinda Pregnant also turns the usual romcom trope inside out by showing the complications that arise after partners commit to each other — and how, in straight relationships, most of those complications are women’s to deal with.

It’s unfortunate that the 97-minute runtime precluded a scene that could have made Shirley less of a live-action Bratz doll; it would have been nice to see what Kate gets out of their friendship, considering how jealous Lainy has been about it. But however cartoony Shirley may be — in the midst of a movie premised on a preposterous lie — Kinda Pregnant is as focused on the reality as I should have expected a movie by two mothers, at least one of whom has definitely been pregnant, would be. 

And if that doesn’t interest you: There’s also a Zamboni.