Sometimes Amazon recommends a film to me that sounds very appealing, so I add it to my wishlist. That was the case with ‘The Back-up Plan’, and it was given to me by a relative for Christmas. It looked like a light-hearted rom-com, ideal for a relaxing evening’s viewing.
Jennifer Lopez stars as Zoe, a young and fashionable woman who’s surprisingly insecure. We learn early on that her mother died when she was a child, and her father wasn’t in the picture, so she was brought up by her grandmother (Linda Lavin). She is very independent and finds it difficult to trust anyone.
We meet her first in a hospital, where she is being inseminated artificially; she has decided that she’s not going to wait any longer for the right man. Instead she will have a baby with a donor whom she won’t meet. She feels very positive about this, and jumps into a taxi at the same time as Stan (Alex O’Loughlin). They argue briefly over whose taxi it is, and then both get out at the same time…
Zoe has no interest in a new relationship but Stan is quite taken with her, and they keep bumping into each other. They decide to be friends, but there’s a mutual attraction. She doesn’t expect her first attempt at insemination to be positive, but to her amazement, she finds that she is pregnant. All is going well with Stan, if a bit rapidly, until she decides that she must let him know about her baby…
It’s obvious where the story is going, but the way it gets there is both poignant and, at times, amusing. There’s great chemistry between the two principals, but also some disasters - at times it seems as if their relationship is doomed, as things keep going wrong. Zoe’s pregnancy causes her to be very hungry, and there are some scenes that would have been rather gross if they hadn’t also been amusingly done.
The script is clever, the pace is good, and the supporting cast are excellent. There’s a side story involving Zoe’s grandmother and her elderly fiancé of over twenty years, and there are some interludes with Zoe’s best friend Mona (Michaela Watkins) who has four extremely riotous children. There are more serious moments, albeit tinged with humour too, in a playground, where Anthony Anderson provides some good advice to a worried Stan.
There are also some amusing scenes with a very earnest single mothers’ group, who are exaggeratedly into natural childbirth and supporting each other in their femininity. It poked fun, somewhat, at women who prefer to keep everything natural - but they are warm and friendly women, and I thought it was done well.
The rating is 12A (PG-13 in the US) which seems about right to me. There’s some ‘strong’ language, but it’s not too excessive. There’s plenty of discussion about sexual matters, and we see the aftermath of intimate scenes, but the only nudity - or partial nudity - is connected with childbirth.
The ending is a tad cheesy - almost literally so, as it happens in a cheese showroom - but that’s not a problem. I like a happy ending. And while there’s nothing to make the film stand out amongst other romantic comedies, it’s certainly one we’ll watch again at some point.
There are some amusing outtakes over the end credits, and a brief documentary about the making of the film.
Definitely recommended to adults and older teenagers who don’t mind a story about pregnancy and childbirth.
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