Of late more and more filmmakers have been coming out of the woodwork with their films about their own personal journey in life. The latest is Leah McKendrick the writer, director, and star of Scrambled. She has created a story I feel that is pretty relatable to a lot of women out in the world. This might be their cup of tea. It just wasn’t something I needed.

Nellie Robinson (Leah McKendrick) is a single woman who owns and runs her own Etsy store which sells jewelry-related items. In her free time, she seems to be going to a lot of her girlfriend’s weddings as a bridesmaid and baby showers. She has relegated herself to the sidelines of her friends’ stories. The problem is she wants to find her own man and have her own family. There’s a tiny problem with that. She doesn’t have a significant other and her proverbial biological clock is ticking. She decides to do the unthinkable and freeze her eggs,  which doesn’t go over very well with her family, specifically her father.

Leah McKendrick is relatively new to me as a filmmaker but I know she has made some shorts in the past. With her full-length feature film debut, she has decided to do a personal story that means a lot to her. She portrays this woman as a hard-partying person who likes men and what they bring to her life, but in this story she feels like she’s better than them which is why she chooses the path she goes on in the movie. This world is becoming more and more filled with independent women who feel they can be mothers without the need of a man in their lives even if they want a man or not. This is the story of one of those types of women.

Along with this personal story McKendrick includes other side stories and characters to fill out this full-length film. Ego Nwodim, from SNL fame, plays Sheila and she’s McKendrick’s character’s best friend. She brings a funny and heartwarming side to the story. Her own issues add a nice element to the main storyline. Along with Nwodim, the cast is filled with good supporting turns with Clancy Brown playing the loving yet concerned father of McKendrick’s character and Andrew Santino as her brother Jesse. Both of these men bring a different side to a female-centric story. Without men there wouldn’t be women so they go hand in hand.

McKendrick’s story of course would have the obligatory montages of men she dated in the past whom she feels she may have made a mistake with so she invites them to dinner before realizing she made the right decision not being involved with these men anymore. Men she describes with Nicknames The One… that got away, the cult leader, and the nice guy just to name a few. She has had her fair share of winners if you will. That’s a rhetorical statement though. She guys are pretty bad from the perspective of what she gives viewers in the movie. Most guys aren’t that good anyway if you listen to what women say.

Scrambled deals with an important subject matter, I think women would be more interested in than men. It’s smartly written and well-directed. I just didn’t feel connected to the story or the main character at all. The film isn’t bad, it’s just not my cup of tea. I’m sure if McKendrick were to write/direct something else that isn’t as personal as this story is to her she might make something more centrist to people of all sexes. This was oddly specific to women and made men look bad and for that reason I wasn’t drawn to it or the main character at all.

2 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen