Amy Schumers Fake Pregnancy Rom-Com is pretty bad

For thousands of years, it has been assumed that laughter is the best medicine. Unfortunately, it seems that the laughs in the new Netflix comedy “kinda pregnant” have been recalled. What is worse, the side effects include irritation, drowsiness and a very dull headache.

“Kinda pregnant” stars Amy Schumer who co-wrote the manuscript, like Lainy Newton. She is a middle -aged school teacher who always dreamed of setting down and being a mother. She also sleeps on a futon with a kind of magical spring system that sends her flying over her apartment, which often happens enough (allegedly – we only see it at that time) that she has to hold a pile of pillows in the landing zone.

Believe it or not, this futon will be important later, though not for the right reasons.

Lainy thinks her boyfriend Dave (Damon Wayan’s Jr.) is suggesting, but that’s the beginning of a romantic comedy, so it’s all a misunderstanding, and now she’s incredibly alone and hovering in despair. We can tell that she has been disillusioned because she used to tell her students that “Romeo & Juliet” was a beautiful love story, and now she tells them that it is a tragedy that horny young lovers are making bad mistakes ( She doesn’t seem to be a very good English teacher).

Lainy is miserable, but her best friend Kate (Jillian Bell) is married and pregnant. Lainy should be happy for her but she can’t muster these feelings. Instead, Lainy occupies Obsess and Festers until she finally tries on a fake pregnancy stomach and realizes everyone treating her better. So she continues to carry it, creating a new friendship with the actual pregnant Megan (Brianne Howey) -and and Lainy’s flowering romance with Megan’s Affable-than-Romantic-Wounded Brother, Josh (Will Forte)-very complicated because you know , You know it’s all built on lies.

“Kinda pregnant” is not the first comedy, romantic or otherwise dependent on persecuted deception for humor or excitement. Unfortunately, it’s not one of the better ones either. While seeing this strangely lifeless and depressing trifle that hardly pronounces a mood every 20 minutes, one cannot help but wonder why “kinda pregnant” is not working. It certainly is not the role crew. They’ve been fun before and they’ll probably be fun again. Heck, Schumer and Forte have real, heart -warming chemistry together. A movie about their two characters who fall in love, without any high-or-low concept at all, could have been disarming and satisfactory on their own.

No, the problem with “kinda pregnant” is that Lainy’s deception requires a motivation, even in a despised story, and motivation can create or break a comedy. The most beautiful screwball films can get away with a strange plot point because their characters are found in a world where strange things often happen. Katharine Hepburn’s character in “Bringing Up Baby” adopts a leopard because she is the kind of person who had adopted a leopard. Screw -ball comedies can also justify a deception through unlikely circumstances. Jack Lemmon and Tony Curti’s dress as women in “Some as it is hot” because they witnessed a murder and had to come with disguises (Lemmon’s character also seems to realize – at least, as much as any character in a production cod comedy could – That they are trans, which makes the story extra sweet and inspiring).

Lainy’s deception is not motivated by quirky or plot, it is motivated by misery. “Kinda Pregnant” deserves credit for trying to find some humanity inside a formal-rom com, but it goes so far into Lainy’s tragic headspace that her deception and subsequent shenanigans are not entertaining or funny. They are cries for help. She is not Katharine Hepburn in “Bringing Up Baby” or Jack Lemmon (or Tony Curtis) in “Some as it is hot.” She’s Edward Norton in “Fight Club” – and it’s just not the same atmosphere.

Of course, if a movie does not act as a crazy comedy, we must also consider whether it should be a crazy comedy at all. Maybe we should see this story through a very different lens. Clea Duvall’s “Happiest Season” was only superficial a rom-com, for example: its old-fashioned and despised romantic comedy tropes thinly masked an uncomfortably sad story of how to live a lie-in this case is just a friend to live, Because it’s just a friend because you are uncomfortable with getting out to your family – isn’t fun. “Happiest Season” is not a failed rum-com, it is an undermining and sharp dark comedy that draws the inside of a rum-com and reveals its unpleasant findings.

Hi, do you remember the futon I mentioned earlier? I told you it would be important later, but I thought it was important for this review not to “kinda pregnant” plot. Director Tyler Spindel (“The Out-Laws”) dumps the moment the doping kind of slapstick in the film’s first few minutes set the stage for yuck-yucks. We are reminded that every pair of scenes, we should enjoy superficial comic hijinks like pratfalls and embarrassing sex, which undermines the serious dramatic undertones from Julie Paiva and Schumer’s manuscript – which in turn makes these hijinks much less funny.

There are several scenes of Amy Schumer in slapstick situations that would seriously jeopardize her (alleged) baby seriously. It can work if the tone is absurd, but “kinda pregnant” is just serious enough that the horrible reactions of Schumer’s spectators register and Schumer’s personal embarrassment do not. Then there is another scene where a toddler intentionally stabs a (supposedly) pregnant woman in the stomach with a knife, and the audience should somehow think it is fun instead of deeply scary on several levels. That child is not a laugh. That child is a potential serial killer.

There is a decent rum-com hidden under “kinda pregnant” tonal accidents and a decent tragedy hidden behind all the desperate buffoonery. But the best qualities of the film are hidden far, too good. Apart from, that is, for Will Forte’s lovely sad sack girlfriend who – as a character and as an actor – deserves a better romance than this.

“Kinda Pregnant” is now streaming on Netflix.