It is a truth universally acknowledged that if a movie begins with a woman expecting a marriage proposal from her boyfriend, she isn’t getting one. It was a fate Elle Woods suffered, and now so does Amy Schumer’s Lainy in Netflix’s uncomfortable comedy Kinda Pregnant. After an awkward flashback depicting Lainy as a child who is surprisingly knowledgeable about giving birth, the Tyler Spindel-directed movie kicks off with her preparing for a high-stakes date with her boyfriend of four years (Damon Wayans Jr.).
An evening where your long-term boyfriend insists on looking nice and going to a fancy restaurant? A proposal is imminent, surely, according to Lainy’s childhood best friend Kate (Jillian Bell). Lainy has always dreamed of having a family — hence the flashback depicting her pretending to have a baby on the playground — but it’s Kate who starts Kinda Pregnant married and, well, pregnant. Naturally, Lainy’s hoped-for proposal never manifests, thus eventually triggering a lie that spirals completely out of control. It could’ve made for a sharp comedy, but there’s an ickiness that overwhelms the whole movie.
Kinda Pregnant’s Story & Humor Undercuts Its Messages About Motherhood
It’s A Frustrating Mix
The lie is that Lainy herself is pregnant, which happens through logic leaps I struggled to follow. It starts with Lainy trying on a fake bump in a maternity store with Kate and enduring an interaction with a dressing room attendant that crosses several boundaries. Lainy clearly hates the whole conversation, but as she watches Kate bond with a co-worker who’s also pregnant (played by Gen V‘s Lizze Broadway), she Googles a random question about pregnant women being obsessed with each other. When an ad for prenatal yoga catches her eye, she decides to don the fake bump and take a class.
Plenty of comedies have been built on characters making horrible choices and being questionable people, but Kinda Pregnant‘s Lainy is a particularly difficult person to get behind.
We’re meant to believe Lainy’s loneliness pushed her to do this, prompted by the distance she now feels from Kate, but Kinda Pregnant isn’t very interested in delving into her innermost feelings. She’s soon forging a friendship with Megan (Ginny & Georgia‘s Brianne Howey), who is expecting her second child and drowning in all the mixed emotions motherhood brings. Through both Megan and Kate, the movie (which was written by Julie Paiva and Schumer, based on a story by Paiva) touches on vital topics such as depression and the dangers of childbirth.
In 2025, those subjects are more timely than ever, but when contrasted with the story of a woman lying about being pregnant, they ring incredibly hollow. It doesn’t help that the movie’s brand of humor consists of fart jokes and making a slang word for a piece of genitalia connected to one character’s last name. That character would be Taskmaster NZ alum Urzila Carlson’s Fallon, who is one of the few cast members who can elicit laughter with this plot.
Kinda Pregnant’s Biggest Problem Is Lainy Herself
The Story Isn’t Willing To Examine Her Flaws
Plenty of comedies have been built on characters making horrible choices and being questionable people, but Kinda Pregnant‘s Lainy is a particularly difficult person to get behind. This is mostly because her inherent selfishness is never questioned, and her journey of self-acceptance doesn’t translate beyond what we’re told. She isn’t a very good friend to Kate, as she frequently ignores Kate’s feelings about her pregnancy. When her secret inevitably comes to light, she is let off far too easily, with barely any self-reflection.
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Complicating her pregnancy lie is her burgeoning romantic relationship with Josh (Will Forte), Megan’s brother. In terms of Schumer’s growing subgenre of comedies where she romances Saturday Night Live cast members, Trainwreck is infinitely more successful, but Lainy and Josh’s relationship does offer some genuinely sweet moments. Forte makes for an appealing romantic lead and he has good chemistry with Schumer.
Ultimately, though, the positives are far outweighed by the negatives. I found myself getting increasingly frustrated by Lainy’s actions, eagerly anticipating the moment in Kinda Pregnant where she’d be caught only to be let down by the fallout. It got some chuckles out of me, but this is one Netflix movie that can be skipped.
Kinda Pregnant is rated R for sexual content, language throughout, and drug use.
