Jennifer Lopez is back in her first romantic comedy since “Monster-in-Law” in 2005. “The Back-Up Plan” resulted in mixed feelings among movie-goers this past weekend when it premiered.  Some found it funny, while others found it predictable. It is nice to see Jennifer Lopez making another comeback, but it would be nicer if her comebacks did not always consist of sappy,  predictable, chick flicks.

Lopez plays Zoe, a successful and seemingly lonely young woman. She wants a family but has not found the one yet. She decides that she wants a baby no matter what and gets artificially inseminated. Not to the audiences’ surprise, she bumps into a man on her way home from being artificially inseminated in an unusual way, and can’t stop thinking about him. She sees him again, and they go on a few dates. To her dismay, the procedure actually worked and she has to tell him she is pregnant. After what seemed to be a few weeks he decides to raise her child with her. To make matters worse, they discover she will be having twins at the ultrasound appointment. The pregnancy and their relationship is dragged through the rest of the movie, with a breakup and some comic relief. In the end, the movie obeys the chick flick formula by providing a happy ending. Shocker.

Jennifer Lopez has had a reasonably successful career as an actress in romantic comedies. Her most successful movies were “Monster-in-Law”, “Maid in Manhattan”, and “The Wedding Planner”. After five years off camera, her comeback fell short of expectations. Her previous movies were popular, although, just like every romantic comedy, very unsurprising. Lopez’s performances are not awful, as she draws audiences in and has a good presence, but the movies she chooses to be part of do not help to show her ability as an actress. Unless her choice of movie roles are selected in order to hide her inability to act, she should start choosing scripts that do not consist of her playing the same character in a different wardrobe with a new love interest.

“The Back-up Plan” seems to follow in the footsteps of other pregnancy comedies such as ‘Baby Mama’ or ‘Knocked Up’, but it is not nearly as funny. It tries to balance a love story with crude jokes. Hence, it seems like the characters do not have many thoughts going through their heads. Their decisions, especially Zoe’s, are not thought through fully and everything is approached as a problem of little importance, and this inconsistency in tone distances viewer’s from the character’s problems. The situation that the characters are put in is not very realistic. Of course it could happen, but it is very unlikely. 

The plot of the movie is very unoriginal and has definitely been done before. There were many funny moments and a few comical jokes, but only a few of the cracks about pregnancy were comical. Pregnancy humor appears in many movies and television shows and it is beginning to become cliche. If this movie was released a few years ago before ‘Knocked Up’, maybe it would have been a box-office hit. Now, pregnancy humor is played out and not very funny. It’s gotten old and there are only so many funny things that can be said about child birth that are not completely repulsive.

“The Back-Up Plan” is not horrible, but it is not worthy of the anticipation. It switched back and forth between the cliche love story and cliche pregnancy comedy, but unfortunately neither was especially interesting.