Critic Reviews

It is, in the best way reality TV can be, an unfiltered look into the day-to-day personality of a star outside of controlled environments like talk-show couches and red carpets. That is to say that on top of the important work, Expecting Amy is very funny, because Amy Schumer is very funny. ... Expecting Amy is nothing I’ve ever seen before on this scale of celebrity and this level of intimacy, and that to me feels exciting and important.

Warm, thoughtful and intimate, the doc is no ordinary celebrity vanity project or insider's peak reality series. ... Think of Expecting Amy as Schumer's Madonna: Truth or Dare or Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé, sans the chiaroscuro pretensions of both. ... In the portrait of this artist, we finally see the effort put into being "effortless".

“Expecting Amy” is a funny, frank, open book of a documentary — sort of like a stand-up-comic version of “Truth or Dare.”

Schumer is someone who cannot not be working, and her work is translating her experience into the form of a joke. This makes “Expecting Amy” both a poignant sort of reclamation project and an elaborate if hardly needed defense of her career.

A revealing and engagingly cathartic three-hour documentary series.

The series is not only entertaining and admirable but also an important look at what so many women, even those at the very top of their game in the entertainment industry, have to go through and pretend it’s all good when it very clearly is not.

Whether a person signs on to witness and appreciate this depends entirely on how they feel about Schumer, and same can be said of any public figure whose career depends on the public's whims and affections. And maybe it's useful to see that the story removed from the backstage version we're witnessing is even more interest[ing] and has the potential to allow us a raw and true look inside Amy Schumer, at long last.

Comedians regularly invite audiences into their lives and heads, seeking to glean identifiable truths from their personal experiences. Because "Expecting Amy" offers such an intimate portrait, it's almost impossible to separate the project from the person, meaning one's interest level in Schumer going in will likely determine the extent to which this docuseries diary delivers.

“Expecting Amy” really has no right being a three-hour(ish) series and could have been a 90-minute movie. ... If you want to see a successful woman deal with a hard pregnancy, that’s there, in bits and pieces. At the end of the day though it’s hard not to see “Expecting Amy” as little more than a first-time mom wanting to document her pregnancy in the biggest way possible.

A mostly superficial fast-cut of Schumer's marriage, pregnancy and life on the road that never pauses to ask, why is she subjecting herself to this?