Amy Schumer succumbs to streaming-comedy pastiche in the fittingly ambivalent Kinda Pregnant

It’s not Amy Schumer’s fault, what’s happened to mainstream comedies in the ten years since Trainwreck became one of the last such movies to cross over into summer-blockbuster-level success. But given when she emerged as a comic star, there may not be a better case study. In 2015, Schumer’s first big-screen vehicle existed on a continuum that included movies like Bridesmaids and The Big Sick—conversational, relatable, often Judd Apatow-related comedies dealing with the untidiness of adult relationships. In 2025, Schumer’s streaming comedy Kinda Pregnant is, true to its cutely noncommittal title, a hodgepodge of comedy styles and, in some cases, highly specific bits and pieces from other movies. It’s kinda Happy Madison, the Adam Sandler production company that made it, with its psychology-explaining childhood flashback, labels-out product placement, and faux-underdog lead character who’s constantly annoyed and put upon by the garish weirdos that surround her. It's kinda Bridesmaids, with multiple distressed female friendships and New Zealand comic Urzila Carlson obviously earmarked for Rebel Wilson-style scene-stealing. It’s kinda Trainwreck again, with Will Forte subbing in for his SNL co-star Bill Hader to play Schumer’s love interest. And it’s kinda Labor Pains, a barely-released Lindsay Lohan comedy from 2009 where the heroine fakes a pregnancy with presumably zany results.

The idea of faking a pregnancy for attention sounds so much like an Inside Amy Schumer sketch that I’m not 100% certain it wasn’t one. But while Lainy (Schumer) enjoys the compliments from strangers and the repeated offerings of New York City subway seating, she doesn’t construct her big lie with real avarice—perhaps the first sign that Schumer, who co-wrote the screenplay, has sacrificed the satirical sensibility of her sketch show for something more superficially likable. See, Lainy is genuinely despondent over the recent bust-up of a four-year relationship she was hoping would lead to marriage and kids—and the fact that her best friend Kate (Jillian Bell) is both married and pregnant, seemingly leaving Lainy behind. So after donning a fake pregnancy belly at a maternity shop just to see what she would look like, Lainy decides on a whim to attend a prenatal yoga class. There she meets Megan (Brianne Howey), a no-nonsense woman expecting her second child and always down to talk about the less picture-perfect aspects of child-bearing. Extending her new friendship with Megan—and her flirtation with Megan’s brother Josh (Will Forte)—requires Lainy to extend her deception.

Whatever her blind spots and limitations as a performer, Schumer does seem genuinely interested in making movies about the female experience, even if they are literally directed by Adam Sandler’s nephew and involve plot mechanics as creaky as the Big, Impossibly Elaborate Lie. Besides, potential farcical life lurks within this familiarity; there’s an amusing running bit about how Lainy’s claim to have gotten pregnant around Thanksgiving snowballs into a fabrication about her having her a one-night stand at a Black Friday sale. The problem with Kinda Pregnant is that Lainy is all backstory, no real point of view: She lost her mom at a young age and has wanted to be a parent ever since, but that only gives her a reactive, vaguely hapless desire, not an unusual or comic outlook on her particular situation.

Schumer herself went from the basis for the semi-autobiographical Trainwreck to motherhood (including a pregnancy whose difficulties she was open about), yet her character learning about these messy, conflicting feelings via Megan doesn’t really affect the story much either way, unless the movie genuinely wants to teach a lesson about how faking a pregnancy isn’t a good idea. For all of her baby fever, Lainy doesn’t seem all that surprised to learn hard truths about pregnancy and motherhood, with Schumer appearing reluctant to play too dumb. Apart from some slapstick abuse of her fake baby bump (sometimes funny) and the Mrs. Doubtfire-style hustle and bustle of needing to don or repair a pregnancy get-up (less funny), the actual story of Kinda Pregnant winds up feeling like a holding pattern, right down to the predictable punctuation of R-rated raunch talk and gags that gesture toward satire (gender reveal parties! So ridiculous!) without actually scoring any real points.

Lainy’s banter with Josh breaks up some of that monotony, and Forte, so often a master of cheerful grotesquerie, successfully downshifts to play a superhumanly accommodating, easygoing, sweet-natured guy. At one point, he shares a highly improbable sex scene with Schumer—she’s attempting to give into her desire without giving up the fact that she’s faking her pregnancy—made all the funnier by his blasé agreeability. Eventually, though, the utility of hiring Forte to play a mostly-conventional romantic lead becomes as questionable as reducing a Schumer character’s selfishness. Why pair them up if there isn’t some spark of madness? Instead, Kinda Pregnant and its stars are in streaming-comedy limbo that can only call out echoes of Trainwreck, unable to reproduce the circumstances of its actual success.

Director: Tyler Spindel

Writers: Julie Paiva, Amy Schumer

Starring: Amy Schumer, Jillian Bell, Brianne Howey, Will Forte, Urzila Carlson

Release Date: February 5, 2025 (Netflix)