Released: 2012
Director: Kirk Jones
Starring: Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Lopez, Elizabeth Banks, Anna Kendrick and some dudes
Grade: B-
Let’s talk about expectations. A lots of things
build up expectations around a film: an actor (when I go into an Adam Sandler
movie I expect lowbrow humor), the source material (the Harry Potter films are probably going to
be magical), a trailer (previews for Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby are as heavily stylized as the film), or a
director (an Alfred Hitchcock movie is going to serve up a healthy dose of
suspense). It’s human nature to form expectations about a film before you see
it. In fact these expectations usually determine which films you chose to see.
They can also dramatically impact your opinion of said film. Go in with high
expectations, and you are more likely to be disappointed. Go in with low
expectations, and it’s easier for a film to surprise you.
Before seeing the 2012 rom com What to Expect When You’re Expecting what might our expectations be? The film is crammed full of celebrities, many of whom have starred in other rom coms, and most of whom have a background in loud, brassy comedies. The film is based upon a nearly three-decades-old pregnancy guide, meaning it has no specific narratives or characters to draw on, but does have a general theme that clearly links everything together, namely pregnancy and the challenges surrounding it. The trailer? Well that pretty much matches with what we’ve pieced together so far. It seems particularly enamored with the idea of “The Dudes,” a group of dads who offer up a badass demeanor while changing diapers and pushing strollers. The director? Here’s where things get interesting. Kirk Jones’ other works include two well-received character pieces, Waking Ned Divine and Everybody’s Fine, and the delightfully whimsical family comedy Nanny McPhee. Not exactly the man you’d expect to direct a slapstick-y, celebrity filled rom com. And yet even with this curious directorial anomaly (more on that later), I went into the film with very low expectations. And that might have been its saving grace.
What to Expect When You’re Expecting follows five couples through the trails and tribulations of their first pregnancy. High-strung workaholic Jules (Cameron Diaz), a coach on a Biggest Loser type reality show, is shocked to discovered she’s pregnant with the child of another reality TV star Evan (Matthew Morrison, a dancer on a Dancing With the Stars stand-in). Perky baby-boutique owner Wendy (Elizabeth Banks) is overjoyed to find herself pregnant after trying for two years with hubby Gary (Ben Falcone). Gary’s father, racecar driving superstar Ramsey Cooper (Dennis Quaid) is also going to be a dad again, this time with his young, blonde wife Skyler (Brooklyn Decker). Food truck owner Rosie (Anna Kendrick) gets knocked up after a one-night stand with her food truck rival Marco (Chace Crawford). And photographer Holly (Jennifer Lopez) is ecstatic about adopting a baby from Ethopia with her slightly-reluctant husband Alex (Rodrigo Santoro). Did you get all that?
What To Expect works hard to meet its “edgy” rom com cliché quota: someone calls a minivan a “vagina on wheels,” Cameron Diaz throws up on live TV, and Elizabeth Banks constantly pees herself. There’s product placement galore, the female cast are all highstrung in that rom-com-heroine way, and there are a lot of jokes about how crazy women are when they’re pregnant. For the first third of the film my notes were filled with scathing commentary (after a prolonged scene of a food truck battle I wrote “I’m someone who actually watched the Food Network’s The Great American Food Truck Race and even I don’t care about this”).
But once the film moves past its initial goofiness (and all those women got knocked up), things became a bit more grounded. It’s like director Kirk Jones put in as many broad comedic scenes as he needed to in order to please the marketing team, then filled in the rest of his movie with characters that actually resemble human beings. It helps that the film’s segmented structure allows each storyline to have a slightly different tone. While those tones range from broad to understated, each piece mostly maintains a consistent world (expect for the Banks story which makes a sharp turn into life-and-death drama for a brief moment).
Banks’ plot is by far the broadest followed closely by Diaz’s. Lopez gets a more thoughtful relationship piece, and Kendrick seems to be in a small indie drama that accidentally got inserted into this film. The “Dudes Group,” which I expected to be the film’s nadir, actually manages to balance its humor and pathos better than I expected. There seems to be some truth behind the insights that men and women have different parenting styles, although I wish the movie didn’t have to do so much women-bashing to make that point. Plus there’s just something adorable about a line of five grown men carrying four strollers down a flight of stairs in perfect unison.
I was surprised (and pleased) that the film attempts to give its supporting players a bit more nuance than your typical rom com stereotypes. Particularly Skyler (Dennis Quaids’ young bride) who at first appears to be just another bimbo trophy wife but actually turns out to be a family-driven, compassionate person. Rebel Wilson brings her trademark dry delivery as Banks' boutique assistant; she's equal parts slacker and confidante and Wilson acquits herself well (as she always does). Alex (JLo’s husband) is not an asshole roadblock to Holly’s happiness (I was expecting a Juno situation), he’s just a nice guy who’s scared shitless about being a parent (Santigo’s lackluster performance doesn’t really sell the nuance, but it’s there). Giving the supporting characters a bit of depth helps compensate for the broader plot mechanics around them, and I wish more rom coms fleshed out their worlds with characters who don’t feel like stepped out of a JC Penny catalog. (No Strings Attached is another example of a well-used ensemble.)
While there is consistency to each of the five individual stories, they still feel ridiculously out of place when juxtaposed against one another. After I watch a woman lose her baby and break up with her boyfriend, I don’t want to laugh at a man driving a golf cart through a Margaritaville and into a pool. And once I see a pregnant woman collapse from overwork, I don’t really care if your wife calls your baby “Ahn-ree” and you prefer Henry. Juxtaposing the mundane and the monumental might make sense in a movie that deals with the creation of life, but it’s done so haphazardly there’s nothing to be gained. There are just too many plots (I would have cut Dennis Quaid altogether), and many of them are too broad to exist in anything resembling reality, something the rest of the film seems to want to do. I almost wish these had been five separate movies so I could skip the ones I wasn’t interested in, and delve deeper into the ones that genuinely intrigued me (the stories involving Kendrick and Lopez).
And yet expectations are everything. I went in to this movie expecting to hate it, and the fact that I genuinely enjoyed 2/5 of it and found moments to like in the rest was a lovely surprise. Is What To Expect When You’re Expecting great? No. Is it better than most of the mass produced, celebrity filled rom coms out there? Absolutely. While I can’t say for sure whether or not the film’s marketing strategy was designed to lower my expectations and thus make me like the movie more (alright I can pretty much say that wasn’t the intention), the technique went a long way towards making me enjoy a film I was ready to write-off.
Reality factor: I’ve gone on long enough about how this film’s reliance on broad comedy is its downfall, and yet it’s all a matter of degrees. Elizabeth Banks excitedly waving five positive pregnancy tests and jumping into a pool to tell her lap-swimming husband made me laugh out loud. See, I’m not a total Scrooge! [2 out of 5]
Eye-candy factor: As a long time Gossip Girl fan I have to give this film’s hottest guy award to Chace Crawford. Boy-oh-boy is that guy a wooden actor. Boy-oh-boy do I not care one bit. [4 out of 5]
Aww factor: I’m not gonna lie, I actually cried when JLo finally got her adorable Ethiopian baby. [3 out of 5]
Before seeing the 2012 rom com What to Expect When You’re Expecting what might our expectations be? The film is crammed full of celebrities, many of whom have starred in other rom coms, and most of whom have a background in loud, brassy comedies. The film is based upon a nearly three-decades-old pregnancy guide, meaning it has no specific narratives or characters to draw on, but does have a general theme that clearly links everything together, namely pregnancy and the challenges surrounding it. The trailer? Well that pretty much matches with what we’ve pieced together so far. It seems particularly enamored with the idea of “The Dudes,” a group of dads who offer up a badass demeanor while changing diapers and pushing strollers. The director? Here’s where things get interesting. Kirk Jones’ other works include two well-received character pieces, Waking Ned Divine and Everybody’s Fine, and the delightfully whimsical family comedy Nanny McPhee. Not exactly the man you’d expect to direct a slapstick-y, celebrity filled rom com. And yet even with this curious directorial anomaly (more on that later), I went into the film with very low expectations. And that might have been its saving grace.
What to Expect When You’re Expecting follows five couples through the trails and tribulations of their first pregnancy. High-strung workaholic Jules (Cameron Diaz), a coach on a Biggest Loser type reality show, is shocked to discovered she’s pregnant with the child of another reality TV star Evan (Matthew Morrison, a dancer on a Dancing With the Stars stand-in). Perky baby-boutique owner Wendy (Elizabeth Banks) is overjoyed to find herself pregnant after trying for two years with hubby Gary (Ben Falcone). Gary’s father, racecar driving superstar Ramsey Cooper (Dennis Quaid) is also going to be a dad again, this time with his young, blonde wife Skyler (Brooklyn Decker). Food truck owner Rosie (Anna Kendrick) gets knocked up after a one-night stand with her food truck rival Marco (Chace Crawford). And photographer Holly (Jennifer Lopez) is ecstatic about adopting a baby from Ethopia with her slightly-reluctant husband Alex (Rodrigo Santoro). Did you get all that?
What To Expect works hard to meet its “edgy” rom com cliché quota: someone calls a minivan a “vagina on wheels,” Cameron Diaz throws up on live TV, and Elizabeth Banks constantly pees herself. There’s product placement galore, the female cast are all highstrung in that rom-com-heroine way, and there are a lot of jokes about how crazy women are when they’re pregnant. For the first third of the film my notes were filled with scathing commentary (after a prolonged scene of a food truck battle I wrote “I’m someone who actually watched the Food Network’s The Great American Food Truck Race and even I don’t care about this”).
But once the film moves past its initial goofiness (and all those women got knocked up), things became a bit more grounded. It’s like director Kirk Jones put in as many broad comedic scenes as he needed to in order to please the marketing team, then filled in the rest of his movie with characters that actually resemble human beings. It helps that the film’s segmented structure allows each storyline to have a slightly different tone. While those tones range from broad to understated, each piece mostly maintains a consistent world (expect for the Banks story which makes a sharp turn into life-and-death drama for a brief moment).
Banks’ plot is by far the broadest followed closely by Diaz’s. Lopez gets a more thoughtful relationship piece, and Kendrick seems to be in a small indie drama that accidentally got inserted into this film. The “Dudes Group,” which I expected to be the film’s nadir, actually manages to balance its humor and pathos better than I expected. There seems to be some truth behind the insights that men and women have different parenting styles, although I wish the movie didn’t have to do so much women-bashing to make that point. Plus there’s just something adorable about a line of five grown men carrying four strollers down a flight of stairs in perfect unison.
I was surprised (and pleased) that the film attempts to give its supporting players a bit more nuance than your typical rom com stereotypes. Particularly Skyler (Dennis Quaids’ young bride) who at first appears to be just another bimbo trophy wife but actually turns out to be a family-driven, compassionate person. Rebel Wilson brings her trademark dry delivery as Banks' boutique assistant; she's equal parts slacker and confidante and Wilson acquits herself well (as she always does). Alex (JLo’s husband) is not an asshole roadblock to Holly’s happiness (I was expecting a Juno situation), he’s just a nice guy who’s scared shitless about being a parent (Santigo’s lackluster performance doesn’t really sell the nuance, but it’s there). Giving the supporting characters a bit of depth helps compensate for the broader plot mechanics around them, and I wish more rom coms fleshed out their worlds with characters who don’t feel like stepped out of a JC Penny catalog. (No Strings Attached is another example of a well-used ensemble.)
While there is consistency to each of the five individual stories, they still feel ridiculously out of place when juxtaposed against one another. After I watch a woman lose her baby and break up with her boyfriend, I don’t want to laugh at a man driving a golf cart through a Margaritaville and into a pool. And once I see a pregnant woman collapse from overwork, I don’t really care if your wife calls your baby “Ahn-ree” and you prefer Henry. Juxtaposing the mundane and the monumental might make sense in a movie that deals with the creation of life, but it’s done so haphazardly there’s nothing to be gained. There are just too many plots (I would have cut Dennis Quaid altogether), and many of them are too broad to exist in anything resembling reality, something the rest of the film seems to want to do. I almost wish these had been five separate movies so I could skip the ones I wasn’t interested in, and delve deeper into the ones that genuinely intrigued me (the stories involving Kendrick and Lopez).
And yet expectations are everything. I went in to this movie expecting to hate it, and the fact that I genuinely enjoyed 2/5 of it and found moments to like in the rest was a lovely surprise. Is What To Expect When You’re Expecting great? No. Is it better than most of the mass produced, celebrity filled rom coms out there? Absolutely. While I can’t say for sure whether or not the film’s marketing strategy was designed to lower my expectations and thus make me like the movie more (alright I can pretty much say that wasn’t the intention), the technique went a long way towards making me enjoy a film I was ready to write-off.
Reality factor: I’ve gone on long enough about how this film’s reliance on broad comedy is its downfall, and yet it’s all a matter of degrees. Elizabeth Banks excitedly waving five positive pregnancy tests and jumping into a pool to tell her lap-swimming husband made me laugh out loud. See, I’m not a total Scrooge! [2 out of 5]
Eye-candy factor: As a long time Gossip Girl fan I have to give this film’s hottest guy award to Chace Crawford. Boy-oh-boy is that guy a wooden actor. Boy-oh-boy do I not care one bit. [4 out of 5]
Aww factor: I’m not gonna lie, I actually cried when JLo finally got her adorable Ethiopian baby. [3 out of 5]
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