The Back-up Plan

If you believe the spin out of Jennifer Lopez’s camp, the multi-hyphenate actress merely took some time off after the birth of her twins before deigning to reappear at a multiplex near you.

But that’s a bit misleading. In truth, Lopez’s career has been in a tailspin since Gigli. Her last two albums have tanked. She hasn’t had a hit film since Maid in Manhattan. And her recent appearance on Saturday Night Live was panned by critics.

She needs The Back-up Plan to start rebuilding the J Lo brand. And frankly, I don’t think she picked wisely.

It’s not that The Back-up Plan is bad. It’s just kinda generic.  It’s standard-issue chick flick fare—cue the girl pop! the snarky best friend! the cute pet!—as disposable as a diaper.

Diapers, of course, are on the mind of Lopez’s Zoe.

She’s a 30something woman who hasn’t found Mr. Right so she decides to go motherhood alone. The very day she is artificially inseminated, she meets hottie Stan (Alex O’Loughlin) when they both get into the same cab. (This was one of the film’s first groaners: The “you stole my cab!” bit was tired in the 70s.)

They start to date, she struggles with telling him the truth about her pregnancy—when she finally does, the question remains: Is he in it for the long haul? Is he ready to be both boyfriend and possibly the father to children who are not his?

Some of the writing in the film is truly painful. “I was ready for a baby,” says Stan, when he finds out that Zoe is having twins. “Not a posse!”

In another scene, Zoe is so distracted by the sight of shirtless Stan on a tractor (his family owns a dairy farm), she crashes her car into a tree. How delightfully original!

But, lord knows, The Back-up Plan tries. Zoe has a Boston terrier with lame back legs who rides a little wheel barrow. Comedy gold, I tell you. (And I mean it, this time.) And the film is crammed with a lot of very funny actors, particularly Michaela Watkins (late of SNL) as Zoe’s best friend who can’t resist gleefully sharing her own horror stories of childbirth and motherhood, and Melissa McCarthy as the bongo-playing head of a Single Moms support group (a frantic home birth that Zoe witnesses is as over-the-top as it is funny).

The truth is, Lopez is good at doing romantic comedy. Despite her reputation as a diva, she manages to project warmth and vulnerability. She even allows herself to look silly, as when she snarfs down some beef stew or tries to seduce Stan with food stuck in her hair.

The question is, with a film this mediocre, will anyone notice or care?