The Back-up Plan

What it's about:

Zoe (Jennifer Lopez) is a perpetually single pet store owner who yearns for one thing: to have a baby of her own. She decides to go it alone and is artificially inseminated. On her way from the fertility clinic, she meets the gorgeous Stan (Alex O'Loughlin) who could just be Mr Right. But with a baby on the way, will they work together?

What we thought:

Jennifer Lopez makes her comeback to ubiquity (there's a new album and fragrance due later this year too) with a movie role not unlike what we've seen her do before. You know the kind: ridiculously gorgeous, successful, yet unattached young woman who just can't find the right man despite looking like, well, Jennifer Lopez. In other words, The Back-Up Plan, like much of Lopez's output, is a vehicle speedily transporting Brand Lopez to the multiplexes, department stores and iPods of the world in a fog of glam and gloss. Hey, it's a free world after all.

Though it must be said that The Back-Plan is yet another romantic comedy that sets itself up as fantasy marked as cutesy reality. With a thoroughly modern premise in which our heroine decides to forgo the traditional route to her dream family, the writers nonetheless tip-toe around the issue of artificial insemination like it’s a minefield. It soon becomes painfully clear that Zoe's pregnancy is just an obstacle in her relationship. She joins a single mothers' support group to vent her issues, though they're all about how her new man Stan fits into the picture since the baby she's expecting isn't his. The support group promptly disapproves of the fact that she's even in a relationship. Did Zoe make the right decision to go it alone? It's a dilemma this movie has no time for, what with the plot recycling itself every half hour.

Zoe and Stan (a ridiculously toned O'Loughlin) have a storybook romance where one look is all it takes for them to fall hopelessly for one another. He's a goat cheese farmer who sells his wares at Zoe's local farmers' market, and the best thing about him, besides those perfect abs and knee-buckling smile, is that he's completely supportive of Zoe's pregnancy. He even finds his own Yoda through the scary world of first-time parenting in the shape of a playground father-of-three (played by Anthony Anderson) who sagely extols the pleasures of the job thus: "It's awful, awful, awful. Then a small moment happens, that's so magical. That makes it all worthwhile. And then it’s awful, awful, awful." Quite.

The biggest problem with this movie is that once the major plots points have been established early on, nothing of much consequence happens for a long time. It's a sitcom-sized situation that you could imagine Seinfeld or Frasier get tangled in during one 25-minute episode. Only this one goes on for nearly two hours. There's a mildly funny home birth scene that will probably sell the movie to those who haven’t been hypnotized by the striking lead stars. Although the real star of the show is Zoe's petite pooch Nuts, who's paralysed from the waist down and wheels himself around in a nifty little device.

The Back-Up Plan might have Six Feet Under producer-director Alan Poul at its helm, but this is a plan with no GPS-coordinates. It mistakes exaggerated performances for physical comedy and lets the camera languish on its beautiful cast for another five minutes to pass the time. That’s not storytelling, that’s stealing R40 from the audience's wallets.