The Back-up Plan

The Back-up Plan

Some movies are no better than second-rate sitcoms. Other movies are no better than third rate sitcoms. “The Back-up Plan” doesn’t deserve comparison with sitcoms. It plays like an unendurable TV commercial about beautiful people with great lifestyles and not a thought in their empty little heads. So timid is this film that when it finally arrives at its inevitable childbirth scene, it bails out after two “pushes”!

Jennifer Lopez has never looked better. That’s about all she does here, is look better. She is talented and deserves more than this bird-brained plot about characters who have no relationship to life as it is lived by, you know, actual people. The movie deals with artificial insemination, romance, sex and organic goat cheese, which are promising areas for investigation, but it’s so watered-down, it approaches homeopathy.

Lopez plays Zoe, a Manhattan pet shop owner who despairs of finding the perfect inseminator and decides to become artificially impregnated. Leaving the doctors’ office, she is so happy she finds herself singin’ in the rain. Then she hails a cab and a strange man pops into the back seat the same moment she does. As a Meet Cute, this ranks right down there with two characters bending over to pick up the same thing and bumping heads which is what Tony Randall is always doing whenever I think of Meet Cutes.

This stranger is Stan (Alex O’Loughlin). We know according to the Law of Conservation of Dramatic Resources that (a) Zoe will become pregnant and (b) she and Stan will fall in love. Consider the alternatives: (a1) she doesn’t become pregnant and (b2) they never see each other again. Anyway fate brings them together and then again soon they’re falling for each other.

This Stan is a prime catch Not only does he personally sell organic goat cheese in a ridiculously upscale farmers market but he produces it himself on his own upstate farm. I am at a loss to explain why the movie squandered an opportunity to show Lopez milking a goat or having a goat eat her shoes or whatever goats usually do in movies of this sort.

Obviously the only way to make this movie reach feature length is for Zoe and Stan to break up and get back together again which they do I think three times Their break-ups tend toward communications difficulties as one or the other idiotically misunderstands dialogue that is crystal clear for everyone in audience In Little Movie Glossary lore this is Damon Knight famous Idiot Plot in which all difficulties could be resolved by uttering one or two words

I don’t think “The Back-up Plan” takes place in the real Manhattan. Just take a look at the farmers’ market. It’s more like a Farmers’ Faire at a church benefit in some wealthy suburb. Farmer Stan and his goats, forsooth. But think about that scene where Zoe, a bridesmaid at a wedding, has her water break. What does she do? Rush to the hospital?

No, she commandeers the wedding’s rented white Bentley and is driven to the market, where the auto shoulders its way right down the middle of the street and halts before the organic goat cheese stall, where Zoe can leap out and make up with Stan right there in public while onlookers all smile and listen like benevolent insiders instead of New Yorkers wondering who the hell these jerks are. Does Stan happen to have one of those little boxes with a ring in it handy? What does a goat do in the woods?

I have neglected poor little Nuts, Zoe’s Boston terrier. Nuts follows her everywhere and whenever he gets a closeup he barks appropriately as if he understands what is said. When was the last time you saw in a movie somebody say something and cut to a dog who barked and thought that’s so funny! Nuts is paralyzed from the waist down and pulls himself everywhere on his little cart without much loving or cooing from his mistress who treats him as exactly what he is: a prop. But that little tyke can really wheel around and is always there when needed on camera.

This movie is desperately boring. Nobody says anything interesting; they have extremely limited ranges of interest. There are older characters: Zoe’s nana (Linda Lavin) and grandpa (Tom Bosley) and gynecologist (Robert Klein). They seem human so we cut away lest they get started on something.

At Stan’s alleged playground hangout where he hangs out fascinated by fatherhood there’s “Playground Dad” (Anthony Anderson) as proud black father giving pep talks about parenting joys to Stan but African-Americans are so wise in movies like this always playing proud dads wise advisers God etc. it’s amazing anyone else gets to be in them.

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