Fertility comedy 'Scrambled' avoids the hard questions

Early in "Scrambled," our 34-year-old hero Nellie (Leah McKendrick, who also wrote and directed) receives a blunt fertility wake-up call. Blissed out on molly at her best friend's wedding reception, Nellie runs into Monroe (June Diane Raphael, making the most of her one scene), a 40-something acquaintance who is there with her husband and young daughter.

Unlike Nellie, Monroe is stone-cold sober and strangely concerned about Nellie's recent break-up. When Nellie gushes over her ability "to have it all" by postponing pregnancy until 40, Monroe literally slaps some sense into her.

The only romance "Scrambled" offers is directed inward. Ellie accepts herself. She learns to let go of her expectations of men. But what of her expectations of herself? What is it about her judgment and her priorities that've led her to make such bad bets?

"It was actually the most painful experience of my life, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone," Monroe says, citing multiple miscarriages and expensive IVF treatments. "You are not getting pregnant in your 40s naturally," she concludes. "Not gonna happen!"

Let's build a snow-womb

The movie somewhat undercuts this timeless wisdom with Monroe's jarringly modern parting advice: "Freeze those eggs." Couldn't she have started with something less drastic? "Time to quit goofing around on Hinge and get serious about meeting a marriage-minded eligible man," for example?

Then again, the movie's not-unreasonable thesis is that in 2024, this is far easier said than done. Dating is broken, and neither men nor woman know what they want or how to get it. So, "Scrambled" proceeds to document Nellie's consultation with a fertility specialist and her subsequent daily, self-administered hormone injections to stimulate egg production.

McKendrick doesn't shrink from showing how physically painful and emotionally isolating this process is for Nellie. We see her writhing in pain on the floor as well as multiple close-ups of the needle going into her increasingly bruised belly. We also witness well-meaning friends inadvertently shame her for not having a kid "the normal way" while wondering aloud if it's true that egg-harvesting can cause early menopause. McKendrick based this movie on her own egg-freezing experience and is clear-eyed about what it cost her.

She's less willing to scrutinize how Nellie got into this mess in the first place. While she undergoes her hormone regimen, Nellie embarks on a quest to revisit old boyfriends and hook-ups (some listed in her phone by placeholder nicknames such as "Jeff Trader J's" ). Maybe one of these guys was father material and she just didn't realize it.

The Miranda theory

A few of the guys in this dating montage are obviously throwaway jokes: a "nice guy" barely keeping the lid on simmering resentment and rage, a cult member with a creepy smile, a finance bro with an ankle monitor. What happens when we finally get to a plausible candidate is revealing.

Sterling is a handsome and suave waiter in his mid-40s with whom Nellie used to "hang out" a few years back until tiring of his utter lack of commitment. When she admits she felt he "led her on," he apologizes for hurting her while maintaining that he never promised her anything. Nellie concedes as much: "You were honest. You were not looking for anything serious, and I was doing the girl thing, trying to make it something it wasn't, trying to change you, which isn't cool."

Nellie's zen-like acceptance gives way to rage when Sterling reveals that he's recently gotten engaged. McKendrick tries to get laughs from Nellie's growing humiliation as Sterling gradually reveals how dauntingly perfect her successor is (a Stanford-educated model-turned-nurse who was in the Peace Corps to boot), but is a superior résumé really why this girl succeeded where Nellie didn't?

Timing could also have been a factor. As Miranda Hobbs famously put it:

Men are like cabs. When they’re available, their light goes on. They awake one day and decide they’re ready to settle down, have babies, whatever, and they turn their light on. Next woman they pick up, boom! That’s the one they’ll marry.

Well, this is certainly true of the men and women warped by the "Sex and The City" mindset generally date. But there are other men out there.

Also, is it possible that the nurse approached Sterling with certain non-negotiable demands that Nellie never had the self-possession to make? It's unfashionably retrograde to say so, but sex is a woman's bargaining chip. Give it away too soon, and you've given up much of your power to set the terms of the relationship.

We'll never know why Sterling grew out of his "Peter Pan" ways. Nor will we ever know just why Nellie and her most recent, apparently serious, relationship ended. We gather that it was mutual, a typically vague case of things not working out. But it seems important to know whether either of them even broached the subject of marriage and children. These things don't just happen.

Nellie's plight is clearly meant to be relatable, and McKendrick is a skilled enough performer to pull this off. But she can't hide the frustrating lack of agency at the heart of the character. Nellie's forced to resort to egg-freezing because that's just how grim the sexual marketplace is.

A com without rom

But we're talking about someone who lives in Los Angeles, spends her days alone and online barely scraping by selling jewelry on Etsy, and trolls the usual apps for guys. Change one or more of those variables and who knows what might happen?

For one thing, she'd be pushed out of her comfort zone, in classic romantic comedy tradition. She could even meet a guy who challenges the whole post-sexual revolution worldview that's been guiding her (whether she knows it or not) up to now.

Instead, the only romance "Scrambled" offers is directed inward. Ellie accepts herself. She learns to let go of her expectations of men. But what of her expectations of herself? What is it about her judgment and her priorities that've led her to make such bad bets?

Important questions. If only this movie — and the culture it reflects — cared or knew enough to ask. It's supposed to be a happy ending when Nellie adds the ultrasound image of her egg stash to the baby announcements plastered on her fridge. But what does it mean?

If the eggs mean Nellie has given up on love, it's an unintentionally sad ending. If they're just an insurance policy until she meets the right guy, it's a premature one. Either way, "Scrambled" resembles the cads and f-boys that bedevil Nellie: despite its considerable charms, it just ends up wasting our time.