WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU’RE EXPECTING (Kirk Jones, 2012)The
prenatal comedy WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU’RE EXPECTING provides a
snapshot of contemporary anxieties about imminent parenthood, but it may
be more worthwhile as a document for future pop culture scholars to use
to understand what was trendy in 2012. Reality TV shows in the forms
of a weight loss program and a celebrity dance competition, Auto-Tuned
YouTube videos, and food trucks play prominent roles in the loosely
intersecting plots of five pairs expecting babies. Whether the film is
analyzed for the attitudes and fears particular to this time for
parents-to-be or what captured the mainstream’s attention, there are
more valuable details found in the margins than in the dull and
fragmented story. The
sets of expectant parents cover the spectrum. Celebrity fitness
trainer Jules Baxter (Cameron Diaz) thinks she can keep up her rigorous
schedule while pregnant and doesn’t need to consider the input of Evan
(Matthew Morrison), her partner in the relationship and on the TV dance
contest where they met. Holly (Jennifer Lopez) stresses over impressing
adoption officials so she and her husband Alex (Rodrigo Santoro) can
get a child from Ethiopia while he is wary of the major changes that may
be forthcoming in their lives. Alex is encouraged to hang out with a
dad’s group that is intended to allay his fears but may reinforce them
instead.Food
truck operator Rosie (Anna Kendrick) is upset to discover that she got
pregnant from a one night stand with Marco (Chace Crawford), a rival
cook she knows from high school. He commits to being there for her, but
they struggle with a relationship started out of a sense of duty. Baby
store owner and children’s book author Wendy Cooper (Elizabeth Banks)
and husband Gary (Ben Falcone) have been trying hard to get pregnant and
are elated when it happens, but the nine months aren’t as smooth as
they would hope. It’s all the more aggravating for them because Gary’s
young stepmother Skyler (Brooklyn Decker) and his dad Ramsey (Dennis
Quaid) are regularly one-upping them with the ease of her pregnancy.
Based
on a pregnancy guide, WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU’RE EXPECTING ticks off
boxes on the checklists of things to be aware of as parents anticipate
the arrival of their babies. The four stories set in Atlanta and single
one based in Los Angeles reflect the diversity of experiences but play
out as perfunctorily told, mostly meaninglessly connected tales. All
but one of the subplots come straight off the romantic comedy assembly
line, reducing this major life event to strings of wacky hijinks and
dodged conversations by people who seem as though they’d be challenged
bringing a puppy into their homes, let alone a newborn child. The
scenarios didn’t need the gravity of educational role playing, just more
emotional heft, especially in Kendrick and Crawford’s unusually
featherweight section, and less broadly contrived nonsense. The
one thread that feels the most honest centers on Banks learning that
being armed with information and the best laid plans doesn’t mean
everything will happen easily or perfectly. Her scenes, particularly a
conference presentation, touch upon the range of emotions and complexity
of the challenges during pregnancy that the rest of the film tends to
gloss over. Grade: D
GORP (Joseph Ruben, 1980)Gorp,
better known as trail mix, contains a little bit of everything to
provide an energy boost and maintain it. The raunchy camp comedy GORP,
the last film released by American International Pictures, features
almost all of the ingredients in Samuel Z. Arkoff’s formula but is empty
in cinematic nutritional value.GORP
transplants ANIMAL HOUSE to a Jewish summer camp that seems incredibly
overstaffed, especially with penny-pinching Wallman (David Huddleston)
overseeing its operation. He’s hired enough college men as waiters to
the pre-teen campers that he could staff a major city hotel’s ballroom.
Perhaps that’s why he’s constantly seeking ways to reclaim their wages
through fines.The
guys have no responsibilities beyond hustling food to the kids at
designated mealtimes, so there’s plenty of trouble for them to find at
Camp Oskemo. The senior waiters, who have the advantage of having the
military-obsessed and heavily stockpiled Mad Grossman (Dennis Quaid) on
their side, plot full-scale battle against the junior waiters. They
gamble with the eccentric kitchen staff, occasionally wander into town
to hang out at a biker gang’s bar, and pull pranks on Wallman.The
coeds, who serve as Counselors-in-Training, are the biggest
distractions of all. Kavell (Michael Lembeck) and Bergman (Philip
Casnoff) compete to be the first to get with the virtuous Vicki (Lisa
Shure). Not that it deters them, but she rejects their advances as
definitively as possible. They also mix it up with the sexually
adventurous Evie (Fran Drescher), who may be more than they can handle.
In one of her first movie appearances, Rosanna Arquette shows up as a
wealthy girl who angers her parents by falling for a Puerto Rican boy. The
characters in GORP want to stick it to each other in a variety of ways,
if you catch my drift, but they reserve the most harmful jabs for
Huddleston as a proto-Big Lebowski. Whether it’s getting barnyard
animals to soil his bedroom or ruining Parents’ Weekend by putting speed
in the food and switching out the evening’s entertainment with a
black-and-white stag film, the youth never let The Man forget who’s
really running the show.Directed
by Joseph Ruben, GORP is technically competent and energetically paced
and performed, which is a nice way of saying this is a bad movie whose
faults are ordinary. There’s no plot to speak of, just loosely
connected scenes of manic shenanigans. The characters never become
desirable audience surrogates. (In an attempt to win a bet with Evie,
who’s tasked to seduce the rabbi, Kavell and Bergman attempt to sedate
and rape the fat nurse, although the matter is never characterized in
such severe terminology.) Simply put, nothing about GORP is funny, not
the swishy chef’s assistant, requisite food fight, or jokes about
pimple-popping and masturbation. Chances are everything seen here has
been done better before, even in duds.Grade: F
