Review of What to Expect When You're Expecting (2012) by Fdt44 — 17 May 2012

Contrarily to this adapted rom-com's verbose title, one shouldn't 'expect' much; that is, unless literary desecration is in your hand of cards--if that is the game you're looking to play, then consider this mess a winner.

Inspired by Heidi Murkoff's multimillion-selling-self-help-book for expectant mothers--holding the same name--'What to Expect', the film, will be much less prolific. Obviously alotting more work, and money, towards getting an ensemble cast--as opposed to garnering producers with emphasis on purpose and ingenuity--the filmmakers, here, create a product that is not the least bit unique; it's a generic label laden with followed genre-specific cliches, bawdy humor, and disjointed direction.

So unevenly collected, that audiences feel as if they are watching several different sit-coms, mangled together into one episode; it's an amalgamation that becomes more tedious--keeping its storylines and characters straight--and less enjoyable to watch, as the characters are simply not all that interesting.

By following five Atlanta-based couples, the film wants fervently to incorporate all its character's diverse fluff into one sitting, but such hopes are subverted to an emptily-flat experiment that pairs audiences with familiar faces acting out a weak script, while the experimenters stand back and pray that the audience doesn't notice just in fact how hollow it all really is.

Nonetheless, the same experimenters (filmmakers) know that the subject matter can relate to everyone--we all have either been a kid, a parent, etc.--and manipulatively milk the subject matter for all it's worth.

As far as the audience's concerned, director, Kirk Jones ("Nanny McPhee," and "Everybody's Fine") was never anticipating a success here, rather, with emphasis placed on superficially manufactured platitudes and close-ups of innocently adorable babies, he purported to cash-in on a huge demographic.

Following the conventional screenplay formula for movies of the rom-com variety, there are endless storylines co-existing. There's the TV-fitness-guru instructor (Cameron Diaz), who's having a baby with her partner from a reality "Dancing with the Stars"-copy program (Matthew Morrison).

In an exchange between the two, director Kirk Jones takes a few lines from Murkoff's book, where the couple discusses circumcision; germane to the book's content--maybe--but interpolated well into the film--not in the least.

Next, is a struggling photographer (Jennifer Lopez) who desires to adopt a child from Ethiopia, due to a failure to conceive, with her husband (Rodrigo Santoro). Much of their involvement in the film stems from their doubts that the adoption agency will accept their bohemian lifestyle as apt, as well as Lopez's attempts to sell her pain from her child-rearing limitation; this, however, is made hard to buy as she lacks any real emotional connection with audiences, endowing only a trimmed figure, a petulant behavior, and a little girl's voice.

Dennis Quaid also appears into the mix as the back-slapping, ultra-competitive, former NASCAR champ, now-dotage-dwelling sugar-daddy of much younger trophy-wife, Brooklyn Decker, who's character also happens to be expecting.

But, perhaps the best to watch of the couples is Elizabeth Banks, an author and boutique owner, and her subservient husband (Ben Falcone) who is immediately assigned as the target of fun-poking and humiliation.

His father happens to be Quaid's character, but his dislike of his father's personal life is made apparently known. Being a former weight-loss-show-contestant, his once obese-self still wears heavy on him, and is the source of some ridicule.

Anna Kendrick and Chace Crawford make up the last couple, rival foodtruck chefs, albeit they are the least like the other four, and at times, appear to be starring in their own movie--something that could possibly work much better than this film here.

They are twenty-something lovers, who occasionally exchange a few flirtatious right-hands in the process. Notwithstanding the women's role in the film--Bank's awkward, yet resonantly true rant about her third-trimester "hell" towards the end is the best part--this film is about the "Dudes.

" The husbands join up with Chris Rock to form a support group for fledglingly-expecting fathers, as they banter in the park about parenting bloopers and blessings. They offer some laughs, but mostly they appear pretentiously unfunny--pushing strollers in slow-motion and strutting like secret agents; not to mention the severity of some of the preceived jokes' content--leaving a child at daycare, for example, not considered humorous by all.

Despite its few laughs, ensemble cast, and affecting hints towards pregnancy, 'What to Expect' is an over-packed piece of luggage that becomes too frustrating to haul around; an immersion too tediously futile and not nearly enough funny.

Expect worse.