Amy Schumer is a divisive comedian, it's fair to say – and there's no need for me to relitigate her reputation at this point. Still, she's been involved with some blockbuster comedy releases in her time, and is now teaming up with Netflix on a new original movie that hopes to harness all her best qualities.
Kinda Pregnant stars Schumer as Lainy, a youngish woman who gets profoundly jealous of the special treatment lavished on her best friend as soon as she becomes pregnant. She tries on a fake baby bump to see what it's like being treated better by society, and then gets a little addicted to the situation.
As the trailer points out, sometimes this sort of lie can get away with you – before you know it, countless people think you're pregnant for real, and you're in way over your head. Expect a lot of slapstick comedy making that point more obvious, including what looks like a yoga class that goes wrong.
This is a rom-com at heart, though, since she's destined to meet Will Forte as the man of her dreams – crucially, while she's wearing the bump. How do you start an honest relationship if your partner thinks you're genuinely pregnant when you're very much not? Either way, there are clearly going to be a lot of taboo-busting jokes about pregnancies.
That question will probably get answered in the form of a third-act disaster, but you'll have to wait a few more weeks before you can see just how funny or unfunny Schumer manages to be in Kinda Pregnant. The movie arrives on Netflix at the start of next month, on 5 February.
We're in a bit of an era of massive comedy movies anchored by huge stars on the biggest and best streaming services out there – Netflix and Amazon Prime Video both seem to have figured out just broad the genre's appeal can be. The downside to that discovery is that their output can be pretty mixed in quality, with low-brow humour often becoming the default. I'm not holding out all that much hope in Kinda Pregnant on that front, but the jury will remain out for a few weeks yet, until it starts streaming.
