‘Private Life’ is very funny — but things get weird

“Private Life” gives us an intrusive and often funny look into a couple’s struggle to conceive. If only director Tamara Jenkins’ dramedy stayed as grounded as its relatable premise.

“Fertility junkies” is what friends call Rachel (Kathryn Hahn) and Richard (Paul Giamatti). The married New Yorkers, who are respectively 41 and 47, have tried for years to get pregnant, but have been stymied by sperm and egg troubles.

They’re fixtures at local clinics and drop thousands on experimental therapies. Those hospital bits are a scream. When Richard tries to, um, deliver his specimen, the TV remote control breaks and the porn on-screen blares at full volume. Giamatti’s reaction is hilarious.

All else having failed, they ask their 25-year-old non-biological niece Sadie (Kayli Carter) for one of her eggs. That’s when things get too weird.

While the request from the desperate, wannabe parents is certainly believable, what you don’t buy is the way Sadie is treated by them in the film. She becomes a kind of strange, live-in lover minus the sex or romance. It’s creepy — and loses the audience in the end.