The Back Up Plan
Tue, April 20, 2010 
Jennifer Lopez is back from her career hiatus with the romantic comedy 'The Back Up Plan' hitting theatres this Friday.
After years of dating, Zoe (Jennifer Lopez) has decided waiting for the right one is taking too long. Determined to become a mother, she commits to a plan, makes an appointment and decides to go to it alone. That same day, Zoe meets Stan (Alex OLoughlin) a man with real possibilities.
Trying to nurture a budding relationship and hide the early signs of pregnancy becomes a comedy of errors for Zoe and creates confusing signals for Stan. When Zoe nervously reveals the reason for her unpredictable behavior, Stan commits fully and says he's in. Never before has love seen a courtship where a wild night of sex involves three in a bed; Stan, Zoe and the ever-present massive pregnancy pillow. Or, where date night consists of being the focal point at a near-strangers water birth which does for kiddie pools what Jaws did for swimming in the ocean. The real pregnancy test comes when both of them realize they really don't know each other outside of hormonal chaos and birth preparations. With the nine month clock ticking, both begin to experience cold feet. Anyone can fall in love, get married and have a baby but doing it backwards in hyper-drive could be proof positive that they were made for each other.
trying to use nothing close to your regular formula for most romantic comedies 'Back Up Plan' starts off with Zoe meeting Stan while stealing one anothers cabs, then running into each other several times after by "coincidence" until Stan convinces her to a date, shortly there after they're dating and she tells him about the pregnancy she self induced from a doner, at which point he decides to come on full board. Little does he know she's not carrying just one baby but actually twins.
Stan is somewhat of an unrealistic character as are most male leads in rom coms, he's Good-looking and unhitched with a cheese-making farm upstate, he dreams of opening his own grocery store with local, sustainable farm goods. This and he was once married to a Swedish nymphomaniac that makes him distrustful of women.
Meanwhile, she was deserted by her father, which makes her distrustful of men. But these are screenwriting tricks to extend the courtship through nine months of pregnancy. There seems to be a real lack of dramatic conflict, but filling that void is the supporting cast made up of her shitty advice giving best friend (Michaela Watkins) her pregnancy pillow, and a cute but handicapped Boston terrier who uses a tiny dog wheel chair to get around.
One of the funniest parts is Anthony Anderson's cameo in the park with Stan. After that the comedy really seems to fall flat. What with the single-mother support group that Zoe impulsively joins, which is where they experience the over the top water birth, which I'm sure was supposed to be funny, but ended up more disturbing then anything.
It's obvious that the focus is on Lopez' re-launching her career as she's given extra dialogue and clever things to say where they're clearly not needed in the story, however her performance, is good, well certainly a lot better then what I was expecting.
Overall what you end up with is, the same rom com formula after all. By the third act everything becomes very predictable, but I'm sure the core demographic for these films will be happy with the outcome.
Not bad for the romantic date night movie, but not very good as a comedy on its own.
I give 'The Back Up Plan' an overall 2/5
Opening in theatres this Friday April 23 2010
Reader Comments (9)
Nice review. By core demographic for these films, I assume you mean women? Are you saying its not something men will enjoy aswell, or its just directly geared towards women?
I really wanna see this, if my bf see's your review he's not gonna go lol
All rom com's are geared towards women, make you bf go, thats what I do. He makes me see Transormers I make him see the notebook...lol
thx for the review btw, I've bin looking for something to trick my bf into seeing soon
more men will likely be "tricked" into this one just for the fact that jlo is in it, shit, i wanna see it just for her lol.
you should do a review for the losers, that comes out this weekend also...i'll see this for the woman and i'll makeher see that in exchange. I heard it might suck tho - do a review!
Thanks for reading.
Sorry Dave I don't think I'll be able to get a review up for "The Losers" sooner then this weekend.
How does a second rate if that "movie site" like this, get tickets to advanced screenings???
Is that all I need to do , lol. I'm gonna set up a blog about movies and find some shitty writers to post storys everyone else is already covering...just so I can get some free screening passes. After all the studious must be givin em' out like cany, especially if you guys got your hands on some lmao
nice review buddy, have you done this before? Yeah I didn't think so - this is an epic fail, please try again.
thats all. Oh and don't worry about responding to my "rude" but truthful comments, I won't be back you fuckin' hacks!
Peace--- Zacattack
comments almost need to have an age restriction on them^^
Great review, I'm sure my wife is planning on seeing this.At least I know what to expect going in now, but I think I'll do like Dave is planning, take her to this and make her see The Losers with me haha.
well at least you read the review, so thanks for that zacattack...
Dave, I will in fact be doing a review for 'The Losers', You can expect it up either late tonight or early tomorrow.
Sweet ass, I'll be checking back for that. Thx
cheers
This is something I know i wanna see, fuck the losers lol, my husband can go see that and i'll see this one.
did you only give it 2/5 because your not into chick flicks??