“What to Expect When You’re Expecting” is a “Valentine’s Day” take on impending parenthood. Assorted couples cope with pregnancies (planned and unplanned), adoption, and the epic change that is coming to their lives.
It’s wafer thin, but it has plenty of laughs – a lot of them involving pregnant women’s bodily functions; the rest coming from Chris Rock, who unloads lots of daddy-to-be wisdom on one prospective father. But what’s surprising is how touching this film from the director of “Waking Ned Devine” manages to be. Kirk Jones and the screenwriters found real pathos in adapting the Heidi Murkoff self-help book, dubbed America’s “pregnancy bible.”
Elizabeth Banks plays Wendy, a self-help book author, a pregnancy “expert” who has never been able to get pregnant herself – until now. She and hubby Gary (Ben Falcone) are all set to glow with the “angel’s kisses” of “this miracle.” And then her husband’s ex-race car driver dad (Dennis Quaid) and his trophy bride (Brooklyn Decker) one-up them. Father and mother-in-law are expecting twins.
Anna Kendrick is the food-truck chef whose one-night tumble with a high school flame (Chace Crawford), also a food-truck cook, put her in a family way.
Cameron Diaz is a TV fitness guru who is newly pregnant with her “Celebrity Dance Factor” partner (Matthew Morrison of TV’s “Glee.”). Sure, she found out she was pregnant by throwing up on live TV. But she figures as fit as she is, she can do this pregnancy thing in her spare time.
And Jennifer Lopez and Rodrigo Santoro are buying the house and prepping for an adoption. Santoro’s Alex is the guy his wife sends to a “dudes group,” daddies with toddlers who trundle their kids through the parks of Los Angeles. And that’s where daddy Chris Rock presides.
“Ready? There’s no such thing as ready!” Rock’s character, Vic, bellows. “You just jump on a moving train, and die!”
He and his crew make a lot of death jokes about what life is like after a baby enters the house. And cracks about the man’s loss of parity when there’s an infant in tow.
In montages, couples visit obstetricians or explain their state of mind to friends or colleagues. Couples struggle to endure, as couples, the strains of unplanned pregnancies.
Every so often, the “dudes group” (Thomas Lennon is a member, and the very funny Joe Manganiello is the single, womanizing photographer-jock they idolize) gathers to dispense more warnings to Alex.
And then we return to Wendy, who has built a career out of romanticizing this experience, but who has no more clue about what she’s facing than her daft assistant.
If Rock is the voice of comic wisdom in “What to Expect,” Banks is its heart. She brings pathos and humor to a character who is hell-bent on loving this circle of life thing, until she’s overwhelmed.
The film is basically a light, superficial and frothy little romp through the pregnancy experience. It’s choppy and episodic and funny – especially when Rock, a veteran dad in real life, is holding court. ‘WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU’RE EXPECTING’
H H 1/2 I I
Cast: Elizabeth Banks, Cameron Diaz, Chris Rock, Jennifer Lopez, Anna Kendrick, Dennis Quaid, Matthew Morrison, Chace Crawford, Brooklyn Decker
Director: Kirk Jones
Running time: 1:38
Rated: PG-13; crude and sexual content, thematic elements and language
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