What to Expect When You're Expecting (2012)

Stars: Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Lopez, Elizabeth Banks, Chace Crawford, Brooklyn Decker, Ben Falcone, Anna Kendrick, Matthew Morrison, Dennis Quaid, Chris Rock, Rodrigo Santoro
Director: Kirk Jones

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance

Rating: C

What to Expect When You’re Expecting is another one of those movies very, very loosely based on some already established trademarks.  This time the focus is on the book that tells you all about what you’re going to go through when you’re pregnant.  With that in mind, What to Expect tries to present itself as the love child of Bridesmaids and Love Actually, following the lives of five loosely connected couples, each dealing with the trials and tribulations of impending parenthood.  If that sounds a bit lame, it’s because it kind of is.

The problem with What to Expect is that it doesn’t seem to know what kind of comedy it wants to be, or even if it’s entirely committed to being a comedy.  The genre of movie seems to change with each of the core couples, resulting in a lack of cohesion.  While this would be fine if the movie was a series of shorts connected by a similar theme What to Expect isn’t a film like that.  The Cameron Diaz/Matthew Morrison elements appear to be an attempt a spoof of so-called celebrities who appear in ridiculous reality TV shows, with what seems to be a rather heavy handed jab at Jillian Michaels of The Biggest Loser fame.  Elizabeth Banks/Ben Falcone bit is attempting to recreate Bridesmaids with Banks playing the Kristen Wigg role (complete with the actress who played Wigg’s awkward roommate playing Banks’ awkward assistant).  Dennis Quaid is Falcone’s father, with Brooklyn Decker as his much younger trophy wife, thus filling the role of the father who doesn’t get it and the inappropriate stepmother that we’ve seen far too many times at this point.  The story Jennifer Lopez/Rodrigo Santoro pairing is more your traditional romantic comedy; they’re an infertile couple looking to adopt, although Santoro’s character isn’t entirely sure he’s ready to be a father.  Santoro’s part doesn’t end there, however, as he joins a daddy walking club, featuring Chris Rock.  Thus, his part of the story descends into your typical Chris Rock type movie, wherein Chris Rock makes himself look good by surrounding himself with goofs.  The final pairing is Chace Crawford/Anna Kendrick, a pair of twenty-somethings who get pregnant after a one night stand and must deal with the consequences.  Of all the stories, this is the least comedic, more of a dramatic romance than anything else.

The stories themselves are a bit unevenly handled.  Some of them get a lot of screen time and really give you a sense of who the characters are, while others are a bit sidelined.  While some of these stories deserve to be sidelined – particularly the Quaid/Decker one – some of the front runners aren’t really strong enough to carry the film the way that they do – especially the Diaz/Morrison one.  The thing that works with a film like Love Actually is that while it has a large number of stories going on at once each one is well developed, each character unique.  What’s more is that the stories are all interconnected and support and add to each other.  Part of the fun of the movie is figuring out just how they’re all connected (there are even flow charts).  This is lost in What to Expect.  The characters are very, very loosely connected and thus the stories don’t really support each other in the same way.  The film does learn from other American attempts at a loosely connected film with an ensemble cast in that it has fewer characters and thus fewer plots.  The characters do get more attention, for the most part, but would benefit from more cohesion in the film.  In the end, I wanted less of the Banks/Falcone and Diaz/Morrison stories and more of the Lopez/Santoro and Crawford/Kendrick stories.