Are you a fan of Amy Schumer? I find her brazen and humorous, defiant in her sexuality, and frequently unconventional, even at the risk of looking like a trainwreck on screen. There is no dearth of bodily jokes in this crisp comedy about a woman crazy enough to feign a pregnancy just because she feels like becoming a mother.
The role of the borderline nutcase Lainy was written for Schumer. Like or hate her—and be warned, there is nothing much to like about her—Lainy cannot be played by anyone else. The role requires impossible levels of self-debasement and degradation.
If you have followed Schumer’s career you would know self-mockery is Schumer’s speciality. Right at the start of the comedy(it will trigger your funnybone from the ouch-set), Amy Schumer’s Lainy trips and falls on the stairs of a posh restaurant where she is expecting a marriage proposal from her boyfriend. Instead, he offers her a threesome…okay, that does sound corny, but if you are into this for realism, then you really don’t know how outrageously larger than ‘laugh’ this wacky comedienne can be.
This time, the lines don’t flow from an unstoppered toothpaste tube. They are more controlled. And we can see some really devious minds at work behind those lines. This funny film about simulated labour pains is a little laboured at times; for instance, the whole yoga class for pregnant mothers goes overboard, and really, Lainy bluffing her way through an entire copulatory sequence about her pregnancy or the way she flash-fakes her expectant mother’s belly with a balloon or a (!!!!) roast chicken, takes the rom-com’s purported humour far away from its intended target.
Kinda Pregnant is not short of belly laughs (pun intended). But it goes overboard with pregnancy jokes about sore vaginas and nipples. But that’s Amy Schumer for you. She thinks she can get away with anything, no matter how outrageous. Most of the time, she is right. However, on this occasion, the tendency to topple over under the weight of the artificial pregnancy remains precariously probable.
The secondary character—and that includes Laini’s various female friends and love interests—barely get time to register as individuals except Josh(Will Forte) who seems surprisingly apt at giving Schumer tit for tat. It is doubtful this actor will be ever cast in another Schumer film.
Make no mistake, Kinda Pregnant is a one-woman show designed to flatter the funny girl’s tickle treat.
