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SYNOPSIS: Jennifer
Lopez stars as Zoe, a single New Yorker who dreams of meeting
Mr Right having a baby and living happily ever after. But
after a string of Mr Wrongs, Zoe commits to her back-up plan:
an appointment with a specialist and a solo flight into motherhood.
Zoe's plan proves far from foolproof when moments after her
procedure she's swept up into a whirlwind romance with Stan,
the man of her dreams. Can zoe hide her pregnancy until Stan
is ready for the truth? Or will the truth send him packing?
MOVIE
REVIEW:
It’s interesting to see how the fates of Ben Affleck and then-beau Jennifer Lopez have diverged since that widely recognised dud that was “Gigli”. After muddling around in some other insignificant movies like “Paycheck” and “Surviving Christmas”, Affleck found his calling in tough gritty crime thrillers, writing and directing the critically acclaimed “Gone Baby Gone” and this fall’s “The Town”.
Jennifer Lopez, on the other hand, seemed to survive the early years of “Gigli” better. She had a modest hit in “Shall We Dance” with Richard Gere and another equally modest hit in “Monster-in-Law” with Jane Fonda. And then she just about disappeared from the movie business for five years, returning once again to the rom-com genre (the only genre she has found some success in) with this lame, unfunny excuse of a romantic comedy.
The conceit here is how Jennifer Lopez’s Zoe, who has had a problem with meeting men and falling in love, decides to go for artificial insemination so she can have a baby before it’s too late- right before meeting Mr Right, played by Alex O’Loughlin’s Stan. Sound clever? Well, that’s probably just about the only bright spark of ingenuity in this otherwise by-the-numbers boy-meets-girl story scripted by TV writer Kate Angelo.
There’s really nothing wrong about being formulaic- countless other romantic comedies have been anything but. The problem with “The Back-Up Plan” isn’t just that it’s formulaic, but that it’s quite completely mirthless and unromantic. The humour, devoid of the witticisms that made movies like “The Proposal” enjoyable, consists of bathroom humour and birth-related gross-out gags (tell me if you find a tattoed single mother delivering a baby in a wading pool and emitting barnyard sounds funny?).
The romance is too flawless. Stan sells goat cheese at a farmers’ market and dreams of opening a shop that sells local cheese. Zoe is a Greenwich Village pet store whose handicapped Boston Terrier moving around on back wheels is her only steady male companionship. They meet when both jump into a taxi at the same time and then proceed to argue and date in just about the most inconsequential ways. Worse, Jennifer Lopez and Alex O’Loughlin have little chemistry so what’s supposed to be romantic just isn’t.
Not to mention the obligatory supporting characters- two employees of Zoe’s pet shop (played by Eric Christian Olsen and Noureen DeWulf) and Zoe’s best-friend cum mother-of-four- are more annoying than amusing. And oh, they also resort to swearing quite a fair bit, as If the crude moments will make up for the utter lack of hilarity of their dialogue. Yes, even Zoe’s grandmother has to do the crude talk.
Apart from parading the gross stuff in pregnancy and finding inane matters for Zoe and Stan to bicker over, the movie really has little else to offer. And unless you find any of the above amusing or romantic, you’d best be advised to stay far away from this stinker. The title seems more apt for Jennifer Lopez’s own fate, which after seeing five years of middling ventures, has settled on a return to rom-coms as her back-up plan. Well, it’s hardly likely to work I tell you this.
SPECIAL FEATURES :
There are four "Deleted Scenes" here, and seeing as how unnecessary the movie is, wouldn’t have made a difference whether or not they were kept in. There is also a typical making-of featurette- “Belly Laughs: Making 'The Back-up Plan”- which seems content to let you hear cast and crew praise each other. Of course, if you’ve actually sat through the movie, you’ll be left wondering just how deluded they can be
AUDIO/VISUAL:
The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio is most alive during outdoor scenes, and uses the score to good surround effect. Visuals are clean and sharp, and the transfer keeps the colours of the film bright and warm.
MOVIE RATING:
DVD
RATING :
Review
by Gabriel Chong
Posted on 12 September 2010
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