Preggoland 2015

Ruth Huxley is a 35-year-old unmarried woman who still lives with her father and works as a checkout clerk at a local grocery store. While her high school friends have married and started families, Ruth remains stuck in an irresponsible, party-going lifestyle. After arriving hungover to a baby shower thrown by her friend Shannon and causing a disruptive scene — swinging wildly at a piñata and accidentally injuring a child — she is cut off by her friend group.

As an apology, Ruth buys the new mother an expensive stroller; pushing it through a park leads passersby to mistake her for pregnant, and the misunderstanding spreads after her hangover symptoms are separately mistaken for morning sickness at work. Rather than correct the assumption, Ruth lets it stand to keep her job, and the lie quickly brings unexpected benefits: her estranged friends welcome her back, and her father is overjoyed at the prospect of becoming a grandfather.

Her sister Hillary, who is herself trying to conceive, grows jealous of the attention Ruth begins to receive.

To sustain the deception, Ruth enlists the help of the grocery store’s janitor, Pedro, a former physician unable to practice in North America, who arranges for his wife to make her a prosthetic belly in exchange for Ruth’s help at work. As people pay closer attention to her, Ruth discovers an unexpected interest in her job, drawing the notice of her boss, Danny Makerman, a secretly lonely man who has always wanted a family of his own. Ruth begins to reciprocate his affection even as her guilt over the lie deepens.

Ruth plans to come clean, but when her father suffers a heart attack and tells her that the promise of a grandchild is the only thing keeping him going, she decides to continue the ruse rather than risk his health. The deception eventually unravels at a baby shower held in her honour, where her prosthetic belly, filled with red gelatin standing in for amniotic fluid, ruptures in front of her assembled friends and family, publicly exposing the fraud.

In the aftermath, Ruth comes to terms with the consequences of her lie. The film closes with her leaving her father’s basement and beginning an honest relationship with Danny.