What to Expect When You're Expecting

Starring: Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Lopez, Elizabeth Banks, Anna Kendrick, Brooklyn Decker, Dennis Quaid, Chris Rock, Chace Crawford, Ben Falcone, Matthew Morriso, Rodrigo Santoro, Joe Manganiello, Megan Mullally, Rob Huebel
Directed by: Kirk Jones
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Comedy, Drama
2012

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary:
Several couples all deal with pregnancy in different ways.

Review:

Tim: Ah, a comedy about pregnancy! While there have been a number of these kinds of movie recently, I'm a bit surprised they don't come along more often. What to Expect When You're Expecting takes the ensemble cast approach, having each of our couples experience a different aspect of pregnancy- some have unwanted pregnancies, some struggle to get pregnant, some have super-easy pregnancies, others go through hell for nine months. It's not exactly original, but it was impressive the depth of different types of pregnancy experiences that show up in this movie. It almost feels like this is the definitive pregnancy movie. As far a piece of entertainment, this is a decent, but not exactly good, movie.

As in most ensemble movies, the huge cast is a big reason why you're watching. The cast here was decent, but I've certainly seen far better casts in ensemble movies. Cameron Diaz is average. She does have a few good scenes with Matthew Morrison, but overall, I felt like her performance was forced and a bit too over-the-top. Jennifer Lopez's story was not all that interesting. I thought her performance was fine. Elizabeth Banks didn't give an incredible performance, but she had some of the funniest lines in the entire movie. Her delivery was quite good, and I have to say Banks made me laugh frequently throughout the film. I still don't know who Brooklyn Decker is, and she didn't do anything to impress me here. I like Anna Kendrick, and thought she was fine here. I wish she'd get better roles. It was nice to see Dennis Quaid here. I thought the role was a bit of a throwaway, but he did a good job. The rest of the cast is average.

The comedy is actually pretty good. For a PG-13 movie, there's a good deal of swearing, but it's used effectively. There were a number of really funny moments. As I mentioned, Elizabeth Banks has some terrific lines. I actually thought the "Dude's group" of Dads, which was supposed to be one of the funnier moments of the film, just fell flat. There's quite a lot of screen time for the dad's group, and almost none of it is funny. Still, overall, there was quite a few humorous moments.

As often happens in ensemble movies, the film suffers because each of the storylines feature various levels of effectiveness. We always seem to focus too much on poor ones, and not enough on the great ones. While this is a lesser problem with this movie, the jumping back-and-forth between different stories is a bit disruptive. The film does try to connect various storylines together in unexpected ways, but I appreciate that many of these characters were only loosely connected. There were a few "connections" that felt very, very forced. That is never a good thing, as they sacrifice realism for a nicely wrapped story.

In the end, I can't say that I really liked this movie. It certainly has a few good moments, though, and there's definitely some entertainment to be had. I typically don't like these ensemble movies, but this one worked better than many of them. If you like these kinds of movies, this isn't a bad one to go with.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating- 6.5



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