The Back-up Plan

Jennifer Lopez may well be the most utterly charmless leading lady the movies have elevated in the last two decades. She has the self-satisfaction of a movie star, but few of the qualities that bridge the divide between screen and audience; her cardinal sin is to take but not give. When Julia Roberts breaks into a smile it’s a shared moment, when Lopez does it it’s an act of distant superiority.

That doesn’t mean she shouldn’t work. Lopez is a striver – give her a character with genuine needs and no scruples and you might get something promising. After all, the scene she is always remembered for, flirting with George Clooney’s just escaped convict in the trunk of a car during 1998’s Out of Sight, is motivated by her need to escape, to have the upper hand. Thanks to Steven Soderbergh, she’s working all the angles in that scene and her subsequent pursuit of Clooney works on her character’s professional and personal friction.

However, romantic comedies – a staple for the actress – are another matter. The Back-Up Plan is her first lead role in four years, yet little has changed from the dismal run of parts that characterised the J-Lo era (The Wedding Planner, Maid in Manhattan, Shall We Dance?) A romantic comedy needs many things, and a certain suspension of everyday gravity – an airiness – is one of them, but Lopez just does forced whimsy and a hapless brand of physical comedy. She provides a dour gravity.

Kate Angelo’s script proves to be several unsatisfactory stories crammed together. Lopez’s Zoe lives in Hollywood’s idea of Manhattan: A former corporate executive who dropped out to run a canine services store, resides in a picturesque brownstone building and has rotten luck with men. That extends to the day she’s artificially inseminated, having decided to be a single mother, when she leave’s the doctor’s surgery and ends up bickering with Stan (Alex O’Loughlin), a goat’s cheese merchant who is soon pursuing her.

Given Zoe’s looming condition, the two are an item within minutes, having textbook exchanges such as discussing first kisses while on their way to an immaculately catered dinner at a secret garden. The story has barely found an excuse to get Stan’s shirt off and they’re preparing for parenthood together, having pledged respective best friends/confidantes (Michaela Watkins and the always blustering Anthony Anderson) to bounce predictable comic riffs off.

But the film never bothers to have Zoe articulate why she wanted a child, and her bump becomes an accessory to various gags and questions of commitment. Stan keeps freaking out and coming back, Zoe keeps expecting him to go so she passively starts pushing him; they could have been arguing over a pet dog for all the script reveals. Despite the universal timeline a pregnancy involves, there’s no sense of nine months passing, while the film has a contradictory attitude to the physical necessities of giving birth. A few early scenes, such as a vaginal ultrasound, are done with matter of fact realism, but they tend to then be played as the cues for a punch line about how icky it all is.

Both Angelo and director Alan Poul are episodic television hands (Will & Grace and Six Feet Under respectively), and The Back-Up Plan never rises above their professional experience. Poul clumps his cast together and his disinterest in a decent master shot makes for a clammy, confined feel. Everything feels forced, right up until the delivery scene, where Zoe’s contractions pause long enough for Stan to deliver his heartfelt pledge of allegiance. Unlike her, you may need an epidural to get through this.