A movie I wasn’t expecting much of, What to Expect When You Are Expecting is a light-hearted comedy about pregnancy and couples, that I neither liked nor loathed. It has some great hits with the humour but also felt pointless and dragged on at times too.
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With an all star female cast including Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Lopez, Elizabeth Banks, Brooklyn Decker, Aussie Rebel Wilson and my personal favourite Anna Kendrick, we see each go through their own problems with thier lives. Romance blossoms, couples get pregnant and the plot is pretty much centered around the build up to childbirth.
Chris Rock provides some good humour as well as some of the other male characters, and I’ll admit it had me laughing a decent amount of the time, which is a positive. While many don’t enjoy Rebel Wilson, her usual type of character (a not-so-bright girl) appears here and I didn’t mind it. The movie constantly switches between the couples, most of the time not having any direct interaction with each other but simply showing each of their individual struggles and issues.
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Unfortunately, the movie is let down when it came to caring for the characters. It’s really hard to feel anything and to be frank – it didn’t really bother me what happened to any of them. There doesn’t seem to be much of a build up with issues as they get resolved quite quickly before fresh ones come up. In fairness though, JLO’s character does have an ongoing issue so there’s a bit of a plot there, but most of the time it’s family issues which while relatable aren’t really interesting.
The movie tries to tie the various females together by showing them watching the same TV show at the same time, but when you really think about it the whole plot is a set of individual stories, with most of them not coming together at the end.
If the movie sets out to make you laugh then I feel it had achieved it’s goal. I enjoyed it when it wasn’t trying to be too emotional and it was actually a good 110 minutes for the most part. However, I really couldn’t care about the people or stories in the movie and I’m not sure why I felt it was implemented so poorly.
I think anyone who has experienced pregnancy might enjoy this, and it’s definitely for a female audience. If you are a male and get dragged to this you probably won’t hate it, but it’s definitely something Mother’s would appreciate more. C+
