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: Our Idiot Brother

When I heard that Paul Rudd was starring in a movie called Our Idiot Brother, I knew I had to see it.  I don't usually get all starry-eyed about actors, but Paul Rudd has a kind of irresistible witty-yet-down-to-earth geek-chic appeal, a new facet of which is illuminated in this indie flick.  Part comedy, part family drama, Our Idiot Brother is the story of Ned Rochlin, a guy who gets arrested for selling pot to a uniformed police officer from his organic produce stand.  But don't be fooled by this wacky opener.  This movie's deep.

Thankfully, there are no prison scenes.  The plot just fast forwards to eight months later when Ned has been released.  He returns to his beloved farm and dog, Willie Nelson, only to find that his girlfriend (Kathryn Hahn) has replaced him with an even ditsier dude.  Suddenly homeless, Ned is forced to move in with his mother, who promptly drives him crazy and out into the world again.  So, he takes turns bunking with each of his three sisters, a trio tailor-made for allegory.  Liz (Emily Mortimer) is the stay-at-home mom; Miranda (Elizabeth Banks) is the career woman; and Natalie (Zooey Deschanel) is the bohemian.  Garbed in a ridiculous collection of striped tank tops and colorful button-downs (well, it's actually just one colorful button-down, worn over and over again), Ned dispenses nuggets of truth that snag the delicate fabric of his sisters' not-so-together lives.  At first they just yell at him, hit him with their handbags, and call him, well, an idiot.  Yet they eventually realize that there's wisdom in Ned's revelations and end up sacrificing the very things that define them to become better, happier people. 

Our Idiot Brother isn't laugh-out-loud funny (although it does have some funny parts, especially at the end).  Still, it's subtle and quirky and interesting.  Rudd's Ned is so endearing that I couldn't help but wonder if ignorance is bliss.  Heck, his blind optimism and faith in his fellow man made me want to be a better person.  I have a feeling that Our Idiot Brother is one of those movies that gets a little bit better each time you see it.  Kind of like Anchorman.

Promises, Promises

Yesterday, my mom and sister and I went to New York's Broadway Theatre to see "Promises, Promises," starring Sean Hayes and Kristin Chenoweth. It was a revival of a 1960s play of the same name, which was based on an earlier 1960s movie, The Apartment, starring Jack Lemon and Shirley MacLaine. In a nutshell, it was the story of a lowly office worker, C. C. "Chuck" Baxter, who gets sucked into lending his apartment to the senior executives for rendezvous with their mistresses only to discover that the girl he's in love with, Fran Kubelik, is his boss's, mistress. It's cute and campy yet underscored by the shadows of the male chauvinism that dominated the workplace of the 1960s. (One review I read aptly compared it to Mad Men.) But unlike Mad Men (SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!), "Promises, Promises," finds a moral high ground and stakes its claim there. Ever the "good guy," Chuck saves Fran after a failed suicide attempt brought on by the news that Mr. Sheldrake is not leaving his wife. By the time Mr. Sheldrake crawls back to report that he is, after all, free and asks for Fran's hand in marriage, she's already fallen in love with Chuck, securing the classic happy ending. Snappy dance numbers, stellar singing, and period humor made "Promises, Promises," a joy to watch. Incidentally, it also inspired me to commit to buying a fedora I'd been eying in JCPenney. (Chuck sports one despite his worry that it makes him look like James Cagney. His was gray; mine is pink and black.)

As a side note, it occurred to me that the movie The Baxter was probably based on Chuck Baxter's character. The Baxter is about Elliot Sherman (Michael Showalter), a guy who lets people walk all over him. Indeed, the name Baxter becomes synonymous with anyone who's a malleable yes man, establishing the theme of the movie. Elliot's fiancé (Elizabeth Banks) is cheating on him with her high school boyfriend, and he's powerless to stop her. Meanwhile, he becomes friendly with his offbeat temp secretary (Michelle Williams), who is enmeshed in a relationship with a Baxter of her own (the inimitable and always-easy-on-the-eyes Paul Rudd). In the end, Elliot gets jilted at the alter when the high school boyfriend busts in. Elliot ends up with the secretary, who has overthrown her own boyfriend for being too "Baxterish." Poor Paul Rudd ends up with no one. Although it's a little more complicated than The Apartment and "Promises, Promises," the parallels between C. C. Baxter and Elliot are definitely there.

Now that the deepness is over and done with, it's time to share an interesting tidbit I learned after reading the "Promises, Promises" playbill. It turns out that Sean Hayes (of Will and Grace fame) is the executive producer of that new TV Land sitcom Hot in Cleveland co-starring Betty White. Small world, huh?