If you haven’t heard by now, growing older isn’t easy — especially with the societal expectations of marriage and children. It can feel like a pressure cooker if you are the odd person out while everybody around you is experiencing these milestones. Thankfully, we’re starting to get where people feel more comfortable opting out of the quintessential “dream” of husband/wife, a house with a white picket fence, 2.5 children, and a pet, and doing whatever feels natural. But it doesn’t mean that’s easy to do. When we meet Nellie (Leah McKendrick, also writer and director of Scrambled), she’s 34 with, some distance from a breakup with a man that nobody seems to want to let her forget. The film begins at her best friend Sheila’s (Ego Nwodim) wedding, and the understanding they would be single friends for life begins to fall away. Oh, and Sheila happens to be pregnant, which puts Nellie further out on an island by herself.
She spends her days as a jewelry maker on Etsy, perhaps looking for some direction rather than just being “the party girl.” However, in the family dinner setting, her father, Richard (Clancy Brown), keeps mentioning that he would like some grandchildren soon. You cannot exactly snap your fingers and make it happen on the spot. Hell, Nellie isn’t even sure she wants kids at this exact moment. But the pressures around her and the biological clock ticking inside her combine to implore Nellie to seek an alternative. McKendrick’s Scrambled balances the R-rated comedy stylings you would expect from a male-fronted film of that nature with a heartfelt and honest view of the double standards women have to face considering reproduction leniency. Men could have children when they are 70 or 80, so there’s a comfort spot where they can always exist. Not only do women have to reckon with biological changes, but the fact that they are not on the same timeline as everybody wants them to be.
As Nellie basks in between her sexual freeness and wondering what is next, she decides to freeze her eggs. This procedure is not exactly budget-friendly, so she seeks assistance from her financial adviser, but rather blunt brother Jesse (Andrew Santino). From there, Scrambled splits into two films that hit an emotional meeting point towards its final act. Nellie takes a funny, but unsuccessful trip down memory lane to retrace steps with guys from her past. (they have names like ‘The Nice Guy,’ ‘The Cult Leader,’ and ‘Peter Pan.’) Its tone and style are reminiscent of comedies such as Knocked Up. With that, there’s a rather unique and personal aspect to the fertility treatments Nellie has to go through with injections, hormones, and fear of running out of time. McKendrick ensures that Nellie can dish a quick-witted rebuttal, perhaps share a little too much with people around her, and provides her some emotional space to reckon with the fact that this process is not easy.
While Scrambled tends to retrace some of its steps within the middle of the film, it becomes something more once it escapes the continuance of comedies before it. There’s a scene where Nellie goes to a support group for women who have had miscarriages, and at first, she makes some accidental jokes. The women of the group laugh, and then Nellie can share the totality of the journey that she’s been on. It’s a testament to McKendrick’s writing style, where she can flip tones in the same scene, and they both work in tandem. The film brims with relatability, from wanting to text your exes to possibly rekindling a semblance of attraction in hopes of having a chance at the romance you see around you. There are also the lonely parts and the spots in the party where you feel like you stand out in the wrong ways because you don’t have a ring on your finger. Nellie has her bridesmaid entrance down to a tee at the beginning of Scrambled and gains so much more about what she wants outside everybody’s expectations at the end.
Photo Credit: Lionsgate
