Kinda Pregnant

It's depressing that, in a world with very few films about pregnancy full stop, there are so many films about fake pregnancies – from the Lindsay Lohan-starring Labor Pains (where a girl fakes it to save her job) to The Pregnancy Project (where it's a school project about how women are treated). Here, there's no good reason at all for Amy Schumer’s Lainy to be faking it, and no excuse for this apparently sane woman to be maintaining a bizarre double life where she refuses to recognise that pregnancy isn’t something you can turn on and off.

By day, Lainy is – God help us – shaping young minds as a teacher alongside her lifelong bestie Kate (Jillian Bell). By evening, however, she goes to pregnancy classes, befriends struggling mum Megan (Brianne Howey) and flirts with Megan's brother Josh (Will Forte). It will not even slightly shock you to learn that her two worlds collide, nor that she's soon sticking any old thing up her jumper in an effort to continue the charade.

It all just feels a bit pointless.

There are some decent moments: her flirtations with Forte’s Zamboni driver Josh are nicely light and fizzy, and her friendships with both Kate and Megan ring true (though the latter is, of course, based on a lie). But almost everything else is terrible: Damon Wayans Jr is wasted in a couple of weak scenes, while endless elaborate set-ups just fall flat.

Director Tyler Spindel, on his fourth Netflix effort after Father Of The Year, the so-so criminal antics of The Out-Laws and total misfire of The Wrong Missy, seems to be struggling to find his rhythm. Perhaps he'd be a better fit working with one of his producers here (and real-life uncle), Adam Sandler – their comedy styles might mesh better than his does with Schumer. It all just feels a bit pointless. The plotting is so bizarre, you almost hope it's the result of endless rewrites and interference – because otherwise you wonder why any of these people got involved.