Review: The Back-up Plan
Yet again, Hollywood thinks that it's cute to insult women and those who love romance by offering up films like The Back-up Plan, starring Jennifer Lopez (Gigli, Monster in Law) and Alex O'Loughlin (Moonlight, Oyster Farmer, Feed).
The opening credits warn the audience this is a two-dimensional fairy tale, with a vapid fashionsita walking around seeing everything turn into baby references. Then we get to meet Zoe (Lopez), who likes baby-doll dresses and nosebleed stilettos and while dressing like a model, just can't find The One. Zoe opts to go solo and have a baby on her own ... and then has an improbable "meet cute" in a cab with Stan (O'Loughlin), the guy of her dreams. You can imagine the rest.
The Back-up Plan feels like a sitcom, and it's not surprising; writer Kate Angelo was a producer on Will & Grace. Director Alan Poul (Swingtown, Six Feet Under) may have some decent TV credits, but none of the brightness in his previous projects found their way into The Back-up Plan.
About as exciting as baby food, The Back-up Plan is chock full of sitcom-esque devices, from the bitter best friend (Michaela Watkins) to the snoopy friends (Eric Christian Olsen and Noureen DeWulf) to a sagacious stranger (Anthony Anderson) who only exists to incite tired laughs about excrement. There's a lot of excrement, everywhere they can put it. The entire movie is filled with improbable moments, from a schizoid new-age home birth to a romantically lit cheese shed.
Zoe's background suggests she's a savvy businesswoman, yet she dresses like a trust-fund debutante. Her entire wardrobe seems to be out of some up-and-coming designer's dream book, even though her character owns a pet shop. She's the typical mass-marketed romantic heroine: stunningly gorgeous, artfully dressed at the height of fashion that's targeted to twentysomethings ... and with no intelligence whatsoever.
And every woman in the film is a tiresome caricature, from Zoe's best friend who ought to be named Karen who hates her kids to the insane members of Zoe's single-mom support group, none of which is likely to ever have a partner, because that's Hollywood's idea of single mothers. It's outdated misogyny to the point it's shocking that a woman wrote it, unless she was catering to the execs with green-light capability.
O'Loughlin seems to be Hollywood's latest It Boy, conntinually cast in projects intended to make him a star. His bland good looks and throaty voice carry more scenes than they should. Ironically, in the few uncontrived moments of The Back-up Plan, O'Loughlin and Lopez display watchable chemistry. Unfortunately they keep trying to make it cute and funny, but this only makes The Back-up Plan unwatchable.