Pregnancy failure is not a subject movies often cover, and for good reason – when people go to movies as an “escape,” this is exactly the kind of thing they’re escaping from. Pregnancy failure is a downer, and almost always indicative of a depressing time in a character’s life. And it’s rarer still that such a topic is treated in comic form. However, I don’t think there are rules for what good film has to be. And Scrambled appears to be that rare film, overcoming both a dicey start and seemingly untouchable subject matter, to become something worth talking about even if the subject matter is difficult to voice.
Nellie Robinson (Writer/director/star Leah McKendrick) is a bit of a trainwreck. Yes, the 34-year-old woman has her own apartment and her own (flailing) jewelry-making business. On the other hand, she is insecure about her present, having just broken up with “The One.” Her future is in limbo. She isn’t comfortable enough in her own company to go it alone indefinitely. Enhancing her existential inadequacy is the fact that every weekend she seems to be celebrating a girlfriend either getting married or pregnant (i.e. make progress where she is not). It doesn’t help that her blockheaded father (Clancy Brown) is now requesting grandchildren. The feeling steps up a notch when Nellie gets an unfavorable report on potential fertility. So, now, 34-and-single, with neither prospects, nor money, Nellie has decided to freeze her eggs.
Despite the picture being entirely about one woman focusing of one thing at one time in her life, Scrambled is really two films. The first is about Nellie’s past; it’s a Macy’s Day Parade of bad boyfriends and bad choices. It’s about an immature woman who -clearly- isn’t mature enough to be a mother. It’s played for laughs of which there are fewer than there ought to be because her life is more cringe than it is funny. This film is merely passable, entertainment-wise.
The second film is about Nellie’s future. In it, there may or may not be a child, but she’s giving herself a fighting chance for that possibility. This film describes a mature-yet-insecure woman, one that knows enough to know she doesn’t know enough. One that is capable of understanding her own shortcomings and making better decisions. It is tragic and uplifting at the same time; it is as ingratiating and emotionally draining as any film in recent memory. In this film, I stopped caring about what Nellie looked like or whether or not she came out ahead in personal confrontations. This is where we can tell how personal this film is to Leah McKendrick and she spares nothing in letting her audience know how she feels.
The first film pleaded with us to like Nellie; conversely, we’re not sold. The second film made no such plea; it simply said, “This is all of me there is; take it or leave it.” Ironically, of course, this
is where an audience might fall in love with Leah McKendrick. Funny how that works, huh?
Act I really isn’t much more than comic overview of the subject matter. Nellie is introduced to us as having the sole priority of making a winning impression as a bridesmaid. Then she has sex with a waiter. None of this impresses one as the behavior of an adult. Eventually, a more desperate Nellie starts revisiting old boyfriends, one-after-one. All of them are losers. She was right to abandon them. But revisiting this stupidity still doesn’t speak well of her. Scrambled is one of those films where it takes our heroine a while to catch up with the serious nature of her own actions. Don’t worry, she gets there eventually.
If I have any quibble with the second half of Scrambled, it is simply that the pregnancy loss support group scene contains no men. I’m guessing this was a directorial choice; I don’t think you can film a scene of a pregnancy loss support group without personal experience, from which you’ll know that these groups do contain men. It’s possible the choice was made because pregnancy itself is something only a woman can experience, obviously, but pregnancy loss is universal; it can disappoint anybody, especially a partner (which the film recognized). Not having men in the scene makes the experience feel exclusive, which I understand, filmmaking-wise, yet unseen from a personal POV.
If you’d have shown me just the first half of Scrambled, I would have rated it two stars, maybe two-and-a-half were I feeling generous. By the end of the film, however, I was ready to consider Scrambled among my top films of 2023. Scrambled is the reason I go to films – to escape, to feel, to be moved, to be wrong, to live vicariously in the skin of one who makes choices I would never make, nor would I ever make. This is such a personal film there’s no way Leah McKendrick can recreate the heart that went into this project, but I’d like to see her try.
There was one a woman named Nellie
Whose life was as solid as jelly
When she found out her womb
Could become a tomb
She focused entirely on her belly
Rated R, 97 Minutes
Director: Leah McKendrick
Writer: Leah McKendrick
Genre: All that icky woman stuff
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Pregnancy loss survivors
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Are you the kind of man that cringes at the word “period?”
