Cast: Jennifer Lopez, Alex O’Loughlin, Michaela Watkins, Eric Christian Olsen; Director: Alan Poul; Producers: Jason Blumenthal, Steve Tisch; Screenwriter: Kate Angelo; Music: Stephen Trask; Editor: Priscilla Nedd-Friendly; Genre: Comedy/ Romance: Cinematography: Xavier Perez Grobet; Distributor: CBS Films; Location: New York, USA; Running Time; 106 mins;Technical Assessment: 2.5
Moral Assessment: 2
CINEMA Rating: For mature viewers 18 and above
In romantic comedy The Back-up Plan, pet shop owner Zoe (Jennifer Lopez) is getting on in years and getting tired of waiting for Mr. Right but wants motherhood now. So she gets herself pregnant in vitro although she is not interested in the identity of the sperm donor, a redhead according to her doctor (Robert Klein). Just minutes after she gets artificially inseminated, Zoe meets Stan (Alex O’Loughlin) inside a cab. They bicker over whose cab it is and eventually part ways. Days later Zoe spots the guy at a high end street market, selling cheese. Stan starts pursuit; Zoe, though attracted to Stan, holds back especially when she learns she is pregnant. A couple of dates later, Stan invites Zoe to a weekend in the farm. As it turns out, Stan owns the farm—The Little Goat Farm where he makes the cheeses he sells—and it is not little at all. After a roll in the hay, Zoe confesses to her condition, and a disappointed Stan turns away.
Despite its great-looking lead actors and a story that might appeal to so-called “liberated” women, this romantic comedy wants in romance. No chemistry whatsoever between Lopez and O’Loughlin. Their interaction is so mechanical that the viewer—instead of getting carried away by a supposedly searing and endearing love story—remains unmoved as he quips, “Is that it?” And as far as comedy goes, call this predictable, relying on poop and genital humor and pathetically spoofing childbirth. That particularly dreadful scene where a single mother raises hell through a water birth is not only not funny, it is even vulgar.
While on the surface The Back-up Plan may elicit laughter from indiscriminating viewers, the movie actually reflects a dangerously distorted view of parenthood, undermining the Church’s teachings on the need to maintain the link between the unitive and procreative aspects of married love. It says that a woman can choose to be a mother without benefit of coitus with a man she is married to. While science has so advanced as to make such a situation possible, viewers must be spurred to examine the morality of such a decision. Must a woman be so impatient for motherhood that it’s all right to buy sperms to get pregnant? A woman can be impregnated, in exactly the same way as a cow, but what are its implications on the future relationship between her and her child? Why want a baby and then deprive it of its natural father’s presence, nurture and affection? By presenting childbirth as a grossly laughable experience, and then giving the movie a happy ending, The Back-up Plan just might succeed in making teen girls dread childbirth while deluding them into thinking they can go ahead and get impregnated like a cow and hope to find a rich gentleman farmer with soulful eyes who’ll love them forever and ever no matter what.
