What to Expect When You're Expecting

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

The Next Three Days

THE NEXT THREE DAYS (Paul Haggis, 2010)

In THE NEXT THREE DAYS John and Lara Brennan’s happy marriage is shattered when Pittsburgh police turn up at their front door one morning to arrest her for murder. Lara (Elizabeth Banks) is convicted to a life sentence, but John (Russell Crowe) holds out hope that the appeals process will ultimately free his wife. Eventually he realizes that the legal system will not overturn her conviction, so he plots to break her out of prison and escape out of the country with her and their son.

John’s singular focus and dogged mission planning propels THE NEXT THREE DAYS for a considerable amount of the running time. He’s a man obsessed with doing whatever he can in the hope of reuniting his family. The film hums from his intensity and the detail-oriented approach, even if it passes along as truth the MYTHBUSTERS-busted technique of using a tennis ball to unlock a locked vehicle.

Crowe delivers a lived-in, no-nonsense performance that has come to define his body of work. Although in comparatively few scenes, Banks is good at conveying her character’s weariness through this ordeal.

THE NEXT THREE DAYS co-writer and director Paul Haggis succeeds at exploring the psychological burdens of this situation while leaving some of the more interesting questions untouched. The audience may take it on good faith that Lara is innocent and wrongly imprisoned, but the film is less clear about that for an astonishingly long time yet doesn’t factor it into the equation. John is warned that he should be prepared to leave his son behind, but that doesn’t feel like a choice the film is ever committed to make.

The bulk of THE NEXT THREE DAYS consists of the build-up to the escape plan, which is probably just as well since this is a thriller surprisingly light on thrills. THE NEXT THREE DAYS mostly works as a dramatic study, but for a movie with a daring prison break, it needs more sizzle in the action.

Grade: C+

Definitely, Maybe

DEFINITELY, MAYBE (Adam Brooks, 2008)

Dissatisfied at work and on the verge of divorce, Will Hayes (Ryan Reynolds) wonders how he ended up where life has brought him. In DEFINITELY, MAYBE he gets the opportunity to revisit his post-college path into adulthood when his daughter Maya (Abigail Breslin) quizzes him about how he met her mother and why he doesn't love her now.

Will decides to spare Maya no details, including some a father probably ought to omit, as he tells her about the three primary women from his past. He changes the names so she can try to figure out which might be the one she calls mom.

The candidates include Emily (Elizabeth Banks), the college sweetheart Will leaves in Wisconsin when he goes to New York City to help with Bill Clinton's 1992 Presidential campaign; Summer Hartley (Rachel Weisz), a journalist and acquaintance of Emily's; and April (Isla Fisher), an apolitical worker at campaign headquarters who becomes his best friend.

DEFINITELY, MAYBE'S framing device feels especially contrived since Maya knows her mom. The way she's spoken of in the present makes it sound as though she's been out of the picture for years. In theory Maya would be familiar enough with her parents' story or mother's history that this needlessly complicated recounting of Will's love life wouldn't have her guessing nearly as long as she does.

While the uncertainty of which woman Will marries is a nice change from the many predictable romantic comedies, the mystery gets stretched out a little beyond the point where it still holds interest. Will is a storyteller who doesn't know what parts are extraneous.

Yet it is the attention to the messy details in each of Will's relationships that serves as DEFINITELY, MAYBE'S strength. Romantic comedies can often be mindless sprints to the altar. This film gets entrenched in the mundane issues that test and frustrate people who may be good together if it weren't for different choices or circumstances.

Will and Emily might have been the perfect couple if he hadn't left her hundreds of miles behind. Will and Summer might have made great partners if professional interests didn't cause conflict. Will and April might have become more than wonderful friends if the timing of their availability wasn't so rotten. Love is seldom as easy as it appears in the movies. DEFINITELY, MAYBE does an admirable job of presenting the struggles inherent in finding the love of a lifetime.

I've found Reynolds insufferable in many of his other films, but here he dials down the smug self-assurance in exchange for confused idealism. He dives into politics with hope and energy only to be disappointed by his heroes. (The Clinton campaign can seem too visible in the film, but the former President's problems brought on by character flaws function as a barometer of Will's dashed expectations.) Personal life proves to be no easier to sort out.

Writer-director Adam Brooks smartly positions none of the women as villains. Emily, Summer, and April are appealing in their own ways. Banks has the most thinly written part of the the three. Weisz, an actress whose projected intelligence Hollywood sometimes treats as a liability, gives interesting shadings to a character whose independence and knowledge can get in the way of her own happiness. Bubbly and good-hearted, Fisher lights up the screen with with her energy and easygoing demeanor, yet by no means is she a pushover.

DEFINITELY, MAYBE stumbles along the way to its destination just like its protagonist does, but the humor and heart compensate for the lack of sure footing that extends all the way to the uncertainty in the title.

Grade: B-