What To Expect When You're Expecting

With the help of a strong marketing campaign, I believed that it was possible to convert the advice book What to Expect When You’re Expecting into a successful film. Now I haven’t read the book, but I think it’s safe to assume I know what it’s about. The film, however, follows a number of different couples going through the difficulties of being new parents. There is the couple who has had a difficult time getting pregnant, the one night stand pregnancy, adoption, etc. There is an obvious effort to try and be diverse, but the result is a few too many story lines.

I get the impression that the script attempts to include as many points as possible from the book. This works well in instances like the dads group and the adoption, but at other points it’s forced and annoying (Cameron Diaz being a jerk all the time). The inclusion of comedy at the forefront of the dramatic story lines is by far the film’s biggest strength. Dramatically it doesn’t connect very well with the audience. Perhaps parents who have gone through events like these would disagree.

The overabundance of main characters slows the pace of the film. And the trend of cramming films with celebrities, like Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve, has never been completely successful. There seems to be an attempt to bring the stories together in the film’s final act. The result is lazy and doesn’t happen like one would hope it does. It can be said though that Jennifer Lopez, Anna Kendrick and (surprisingly) Chace Crawford stand out among the rest as the best performances in the film. The other key players fall somewhere in line between passable and decent. Be warned general public, I don’t think watching the movie will prepare you for parenting. This isn’t like that time you rented Of Mice and Men on VHS to avoid reading the book in high school literature.

Each film earns either zero, a half or a full arrow in five categories. The categories are Acting, Writing/Directing, Emotion, Innovation and Overall Impression. The arrows are added up to equal the full score.