Movie Moment: What to Expect When You're Expecting

Romantic comedy What to Expect When You're Expecting lets it be known that giving birth is a serious business.  More in line with the shadow-tinged ensemble He's Just Not That into You than the frothier Valentine's Day and New Year's Eve, What to Expect When You're Expecting stars a who's-who cast in a network of gently intertwined stories about impending parenthood.  It mixes the feel-good with the edgy for results that are relatably realistic.  Which isn't so unexpected a hybrid from a movie based on a pregnancy manual.

Of the movie's five mothers-to-be, three become accidentally pregnant, one is adopting, and one has been trying to have a baby for two years.  It is this last mom-in-the-making, Wendy (Elizabeth Banks), who centers the threads of the story and most strongly draws our sympathies.  As the owner of a baby boutique and a breast-feeding advocate ("Have a breast day!" she chirps when ending work calls), type-A Wendy has long nurtured the dream of starting a family with her kindly (and compatibly beta) dentist husband Gary (Ben Falcone).  With her wacky assistant Janice in tow (the scene-stealing Rebel Wilson, with whom we became first acquainted in last year's Bridesmaids), she goes to extremes to ensure the welfare of her baby while emerging as a goo goo ga ga guru, an effort she redoubles after learning that Gary's jerk of a celebrity racecar driver dad (Dennis Quaid) is having twins with his trophy wife (Brooklyn Decker).  Yet all of Wendy's resolve unravels during her keynote speech at a prestigious baby biz expo.  Clad in Janice's much-too-big rainbow unicorn-emblazoned tee shirt (she peed herself just before going on), she rages about hemorrhoids and crying jags, debunking the pregnancy-is-bliss myth that the expo, and everyone else, strives to perpetuate.  As someone who never imagined pregnancy to be pleasant, I found her diatribe to be candidly reassuring.  The scene marks the movie's stand-out comic moment, the absurdity of which is largely owed to Janice's well-meant but disastrous fumblings.

The other storylines, while less gripping, are amusing, and in some parts, sad.  The movie capitalizes on the increasingly popular reality TV spoof twofold in the character of Jules (Cameron Diaz), the winner of a "Dancing with the Stars"-type show (dance partner Matthew Morrison is her baby daddy) and a take-no-prisoners Jillian Michaels-esque weight loss show host.  Dueling food truck owners and near-high school sweethearts Rosie (Anna Kendrick) and Marco (Chace Crawford) must negotiate the curveballs of their fledgling relationship, and baby photographer Holly (Jennifer Lopez) enlists the help of the "dad's group," a Saturday stroller-wielding posse headed by wise-cracking but wise Vic (Chris Rock) to convince her skittish husband (Rodrigo Santoro) that it's time to adopt.

The movie's end holds a few tense moments that may, if you're anything like the audience I watched with, have you uttering, "Huh?"  Nevertheless, the message of What to Expect When You're Expecting is ultimately life-affirming, cutting through all the muck of fear and indecision in the middle to deliver the knee-jerk optimism that always comes with the stork.

Movie Moment: Just Go With It

The bf and I finally made it to see Just Go with It last night. Full of color, sunshine (thank you, Hawaii), and Adam Sandler humor, it was the fun, light-hearted romantic comedy I'd expected. I think the bf may have liked it even more than I did, if his bouts of laughter were any indicator.

For those of you who haven't read my other movie reviews, I'm known as a bit of a spoiler. So, SPOILER ALERT. For those of you who already knew that, I apologize for the interruption. Now that that's out of the way:

The movie begins with a flashback of Danny's (Sandler's) wedding day. Big-haired and big-nosed, Danny overhears his bride-to-be cackling about what a loser he is to her bridesmaids. We can only assume that he jilted her because the next scene features Danny, still wearing his tux and wedding ring, sitting alone at a bar when the "it girl" of the night approaches him. He tells her his hard luck story and they leave together, to the horror of all the other guys who've been chasing her. Emboldened by this fluke, Danny continues wearing his wedding ring to lure younger women into one night stands. Despite this sleazy behavior, you can't help but see Danny as a wounded nerd in shark's clothing. (I almost said wounded sheep but thought better of it considering that particular animal's role later in the movie. I won't go into it, leaving you at least one suprise.)

Fast forward to present-day Danny. A wealthy forty-something plastic surgeon, he's shed his enormous nose but not his philandering. The most constant woman in his life is his salt-of-the-earth assistant Katherine (Jennifer Aniston), an unassumingly pretty divorcee with two kids. Smart and no-nonsense, she has no qualms about chiding her boss for his womanizing ways, illustrating the easy camaraderie between them.

But the story doesn't get rolling until Danny meets Palmer (Brooklyn Decker), a blond bombshell schoolteacher who demands to meet his soon-to-be ex-wife before beginning a relationship with him. That's right. Palmer doesn't find out about Danny's fake wedding ring until after they hook up, and unlike the women before her, she's less than charmed. Danny turns to Katherine for advice, and she helps him hatch a scheme in which she plays his future ex-wife. In true My Fair Lady fashion, the glasses come off, the shopping begins, and Katherine shows up for lunch with Danny and Palmer exuding Aniston's easy glamour.

Despite a comedy of errors, the meeting is a success. The farce should end there but doesn't on account of Katherine taking a call from one of her kids. Promoted from soon-to-be-swinging-single to soon-to-be-single-dad, Danny finds himself bound for Hawaii with Palmer, Katherine, the kids, and his odd cousin Eddie (the ever-creepy Nick Swardson) - all because Katherine's son complains that Danny never took him there to swim with the dolphins. I always think movies are better when the characters go on vacation. Well, funny movies in which the hilarity can be heightened by unfamiliar luxury surroundings. (Serious movies not so much. In those, foreign locales are often prime sites for characters to be killed. Or cheat on their spouses. Or have very unfunny life-changing revelations.) Just Go with It is no different, brimming with pina colada-fueled catastrophes. Highlighting the hijinks are Nicole Kidman, who plays Devlin, Katherine's college arch enemy, and Dave Matthews, who serves as her equally annoying husband. Determined to impress Devlin, Katherine introduces herself as Danny's wife instead of his assistant. This, of course, complicates the whole ex-wife story created for Palmer's benefit while solidifying Katherine's relationship with Danny. Simultaneously masquerading as his almost ex-wife and current happily married wife undeniably draws her closer to him, which as any romantic comedy fan knows, is ultimately what she wants. But she doesn't come off as conniving. Katherine's simply known Danny a long time, and they have a comfy rapport that's increasingly shown to be chemistry.

I think you probably know how this one ends up.

The critics were really hard on Just Go with It. But then, aren't they hard on everything? In this case the main targets were bathroom humor, manipulative characters, and lazy scripting. One almost-kind reviewer even went as far as to say "Oscar material it isn't." I think we already knew that. And honestly, who cares? After a week on the clock people don't want to solve life's problems. They want to laugh and see happy endings.