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‘Scrambled’ Review: An R-Rated Fertility Comedy With a Sharp Tongue but a Soft Belly
Writer-director-star Leah McKendrick's debut "Scrambled" follows a flighty millennial on a mission to buy time by freezing her eggs.
After a needling exchange with her gruff father (Clancy Brown) and an encounter with an old friend (June Diane Raphael, essentially reprising her blunt-spoken OB-GYN role from “New Girl”), Nellie, a newly single, Etsy jewelry seller who’s been further impoverished by the endless round of wedding gifts, baby presents and bridesmaids’ dresses she has had to buy, borrows some money from her smug financier brother (Andrew Santino, “Dave”) and signs up. But perhaps that’s also the reason that, after finding fresh, enjoyably dirty-minded material in clichéd situations in the early going, McKendrick’s film eventually succumbs to formula, contriving increasingly credulity-stretching scenarios to get Nellie’s self-empowerment and strength-through-sisterhood arcs where they need to go. In particular, there’s an awkwardly over-earnest monologue delivered to the remarkably forgiving miscarriage support group that Nellie accidentally crashes, a patronizing plotline involving a judgy older next-door neighbor (Vee Kumari) and a frankly grisly ending which features voiceover narration of such breathless, new-dawn optimism that it might have been scripted as a commercial for the oocyte cryopreservation lobby.
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