A Talented Cast Fail to Birth Good Comedy

Kinda Pregnant revels in a combination of gross-out pregnancy-related humor and awkward ‘moments’ between truly gifted comedic talents. Unfortunately, even the better scenes don’t rise far above a smirk or a chuckle because, despite efforts to shock, there is nothing here that will surprise you.

Amy Schumer stars as Lainy Newton, a woman in her 40s desperate to get to the family building stage of her life. Personal disaster strikes when her best friend for life, Kate (Jillian Bell), gets pregnant first, learning this news while tweezing ingrown hairs on the toilet with her husband, and if you’re not onboard with that, it’s unlikely Kinda Pregnant is for you.

A Baby Bump for Lainy’s Slump

Kinda Pregnant

2
/5

Release Date

February 5, 2025

Runtime

97 Minutes

Director

Tyler Spindel

Pros & Cons

• It’s refreshing to see this perspective and to explore it with honesty.
• The actors all commit and are likable.

• It’s just not very funny, and has an incredibly predictable plot. It’s a waste of great talent.

Lainy was hoping her long-time boyfriend, Dave (Damon Wayans Jr.), was going to pop the question, and he did — but the question turns out to be about open relationships. This leads to a spiral of misery which lands Lainy in a prenatal shopping scenario where she decides to steal a faux baby bump and try out the look. From there, she makes a new pregnant best friend, Megan (Brianne Howey), at a fart-filled prenatal yoga class. Megan happens to be the sister of Josh (Will Forte of Coyote v. Acme, never forget), who recently had a meet-cute with Lainy at a local coffee shop.

Related: 9 Terrifying Horror Movies About Pregnancy

Antics ensue as Lainy tries to live the double life between the friends who know she’s not pregnant and the new friends who think she is, and it’s truly remarkable how many times these same five people run into each other randomly in New York City.

A Cast of Funny People

Kinda Pregnant is full of chuckles and smirks, but it’s hard to find the big laughs. The movie is packed with people who can turn a simple look into something slightly funny, from Urzila Carlson as a troubled guidance counselor to Jackie Sandler and Molly Sims as pregnant workshop and yoga instructors. Everyone seems to sink into their roles with glee; even the younger actors with minor roles as students in Lainy’s classroom maximize their moments.

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The biggest flaw with Kinda Pregnant is one that faces so many comedies today: the plot is exhaustingly predictable. No matter how funny the concept, the characters, or the cast of comics, movie after movie falls prey to the simplistic, predictable, paint-by-numbers devices and plot turns we know by heart. Comedy is, in its purest essence, an act of surprising someone. There is absolutely nothing surprising about Kinda Pregnant, even though it does its very best to shock.

Important Themes and Point of View

It would be remiss not to mention that Kinda Pregnant does take a clear approach to its subject matter that, while unsurprising in its mechanics, is valuable in its perspective. Pregnancy has certainly been the source of comedy in our cinematic past, but we’re used to women in full make-up pushing through and most of the jokes obscuring the very human, biological, and challenging nature of this experience, to say nothing of the psychological impacts all of it has on women.

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Kinda Pregnant is perhaps best viewed as Knocked Up by way of Bridesmaids, though it lacks the lasting comedic punch and ever so slightly innovative plot points of either. We get to see women dealing with the fallout of this ‘great joy,’ and how it has the power to alienate, disrupt, and even ruin situations and relationships. The movie doesn’t dwell on these pressures, but it’s built with them in mind, constantly holding sway over the way characters relate to one another and themselves. There is also a core message worth understanding, that a woman, and a person, for that matter, must find a way to love themselves.

In a world with increasing challenges to the idea of traditional family structures and relationship norms, Kinda Pregnant does ask us to consider why we cling so tightly to certain expectations of a bygone era, rather than embrace whatever and whoever we are today.

This is a lot to infer, however, from a movie that spends almost as much screen time on farts as it does on feelings, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Despite Kinda Pregnant’s inability to launch fits of laughter as a great comedy can, its saving grace could be that it adopts a needed perspective, asking audiences to accept female characters struggling with their bodies, their self-image, and the societal burdens placed upon all of that. If you’re looking for big laughs though, which is surely what Kinda Pregnant was designed to deliver, you will likely feel let down. Kinda Pregnant comes to Netflix on Feb. 5, 2025. You can watch it through the link below:

Watch Kinda Pregnant

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