Cliché Back-up Plan Fails to Charm
I’ve always had a soft spot for Jennifer Lopez, not so much as a singer but as an actress. Even in the worst of her movies (The Wedding Planner, Monster-in-Law) there is just something about her I find endearing, an easygoing charm that makes even the most aggravating character feel like a next door neighbor I normally wouldn’t mind hanging out with from time to time.
Jennifer Lopez in CBS Films' The Back-up Plan
I’m not sure what’s happened exactly in the four years (other than motherhood, of course) since she appeared with husband Marc Anthony in El Cantante but those good feelings I usually have for the actress did not appear while watching her new romantic comedy The Back-up Plan. Former “Swingtown” and “Six Feet Under” director Alan Poul and onetime “Becker” and “What About Brian” staff writer Kate Angelo have crafted a film that feels positively dead inside, and not even the usually effervescent presence of their star is enough to generate even a single spark of life within it.
Lopez plays Zoe, a single-minded career woman whose biological clock is ticking who has grown tired of waiting for Mr. Right to come along and decides to take matters into her own hands. Wouldn’t you know it, the very day she goes to the clinic to be artificially inseminated she ends up meeting Stan (Alex O'Loughlin), a charming guy who accidentally stumbles into her taxi cab. One thing leads to another and the two begin to get romantic, Zoe’s impending pregnancy the one thing that could derail their relationship before it even has the opportunity to fully blossom.
It’s a somewhat decent idea but Poul and Angelo don’t do a single thing interesting with it. Instead they rely upon a series of genre and gross-out comedy clichés, none of which happen to be even slightly funny. Food and bodily fluid jokes abound, so many in fact it becomes impossible to keep track of them all, and about half way through the film I was so fed up by the majority of them I was just about ready to call it a day and head on home.
While it wouldn’t have made a huge difference, I don’t think I’d have been near as annoyed had Lopez and O'Loughlin had even an ounce of chemistry. While the former admittedly throws herself into things with her usual fearlessness, the latter looks like he’d rather be back on the set of one of his failed television shows like “Three Rivers” or “Moonlight.” This couple doesn’t look like they’d want to share a piece of cake together let alone embark on the path to parenthood and because of that I never cared for a single second whether or not they ultimately ended up together.
There’s not all that much more to say. I’d go more in-depth into the movies vim and vinegar but there just doesn’t seem to be the need. What I will say is that, for the first time ever, Poul and Angelo have made Lopez so cinematically unappealing I almost don’t care if I see her in a motion picture ever again. The filmmakers have made this charismatic actress a hyperactive irritation, and no matter how bad some of her others efforts were the one constant was that at least I liked her. That’s simply not so with The Back-up Plan, and if Lopez really wants to get her career rolling again the best advice I can give her is to avoid any more projects that look even slightly like this one.
Film Rating: ê1/2 (out of 4)
