The Back-up Plan

Directed by Alan Poul

(PG-13)

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Why Jennifer Lopez would decide to make her comeback with The Back-up Plan is mind-boggling, said Nathan Rabin in the A.V. Club. It’s been four years since this pop diva starred in a movie—and even longer since she appeared “in a movie anyone saw.” Director Alan Poul’s new film is nothing but another “typical frilly, superficial Lopez vehicle” in which the actress plays a successful but single Manhattanite. Just minutes after getting artificially inseminated, she meets a potential suitor (Aussie Alex O’Loughlin). The nine months of pregnancy and courtship that follow are “about as fun as 36 hours of labor,” said Connie Ogle in The Miami Herald. Screenwriter Kate Angelo packs her script with pregnancy clichés, while director Poul struggles to find a fresh tone. The filmmakers’ attempt to explore a “new procreative order”—in which the baby is created before the couple—is in some ways admirable, said Carrie Rickey in The Philadelphia Inquirer. Yet they address this serious matter in a silly fashion. Instead of a smart, modern take on the romantic comedy, we get one that’s affable but “instantly forgettable.”