Jamie
There are a whole bunch of rom-coms that came out in the 2000’s (the real peak of the genre) that really left you scratching your head at what in the world they were thinking. I’m not talking something like The Ugly Truth, which is bad, but the recipe itself is a classic. I mean cases where the recipe literally went bad. The Back-up plan is probably on the tamer end of that. In the middle is probably the Madonna film where she has a baby with her gay best friend and then falls in love. Probably the crown jewel is the Kate Hudson film A Little Bit of Heaven where she has terminal cancer… what a rom-com concept! And what a trilogy I just came up with. Three powerhouses of the genre in films that define logic. Officially this is the first leg of that journey.
To recap, JLo is a lady on the move. She’s got a great job, but she has given up on finding the man of her dreams. Right after getting (successfully) artificially inseminated she bumps into Stan who turns out to be *gulp* the man of her dreams. Oh no! They keep bumping into each other and soon he’s doing more than just bumping into her as he tells her he wants to see where things might go. They start casually dating. Unfortunately, during a trip to his farm she makes the mistake of not telling him she’s pregnant before they sleep together and he reacts poorly. They briefly break up, but Stan comes back and tries to make it work. Even when he finds out she’s having twins, he ends up making a dad friend at a playground and trying to work through all the overwhelming feelings he’s having. Comedy ensues as JLo has a bunch of goofy gags with a single mother’s group including a scene where she and Stan have to witness and participate in the birth of one of the member’s babies. It’s very funny and cool. The breaking point is when he makes a point to tell his ex-gf that the babies aren’t his in front of JLo and the break-up is official. But after a new specialty stroller arrives and her grandmother gives her some grandmotherly advice, JLo realizes that Stan has grown up. Just then her water breaks and they rush to the farmer’s market to pick him up for the birth. They end up getting engaged and probably pregnant again. THE END.
I just had a realization that this is essentially Look Who’s Talking but without the talking baby. The beats are the same. A working woman bumps into a guy who she’s somewhat put off by, he slowly ingratiates himself through devotion despite not being the baby’s father, ends with them finally together and the promise of a very special delivery. The problem? Bruce Willis had a funny voice for a baby, John Travolta has 1000x the charisma of the cardboard cutout of a man in this film, and they throw all the actually interesting drama from Look Who’s Talking out in exchange for an absolute catastrophe of a birthing scene. That Melissa McCarthy performance evokes Robin Williams in 9 Months (you all know what I’m talking about). I have no idea why this exists. I did not like it. Now if it had a talking baby in it I could at least understand the existence part.
Hot Take Clam Bake! I’m coming in scorching on this one. I think… Stan is actually the father of JLo’s kids. That’s the sequel. It turns out this sneaky cheesemonger has in fact been donating sperm for ages. He’s also been skulking around waiting for an unsuspecting woman to accept his donation and stages an elaborate meet-cute with her. Sure it seems like he’s nervous about being in a relationship with her, but he’s playing hard to get. Wouldn’t come off very convincing if he didn’t show some trepidation. His craziness when he finds out she’s having twins? Obviously that’ll cut into his skulking time, he’s gotta think it over. What’s JLo going to do when she finds out the truth?… Did I mention the sequel is a horror film? Hot Take Temperature: Fondue.
Patrick?
Patrick
‘Ello everyone! *gif of me finding a penny on the ground heads up and looking up and J-Lo is there and winks at me and then I look confused* Let’s go!
The Good? I’ve said this before, and I don’t want to get in trouble with my wife, but J-Lo man … from 1995-2010 or so J-Lo was probably the most attractive woman in Hollywood. Money Train. This. Just incredibly attractive. It boggles the mind.
The Bad? Everything else. The guy is a weird actor and doesn’t seem attractive (at least not attractive enough). The film has several insane sequences (especially the entire bit where the guy gets jealous of his pregnant girlfriend’s body pillow … WTF mate?). And overall the experience is the unpleasantness that was prevalent in mid-2000s comedies. Specifically things like The Break Up (2006, four years prior, this might be the death nell for this particular sub-genre).
The BMT? No, the film is just Bad. As far as J-Lo films are concerned there are three in my personal hall of fame: Money Train, Gigli, and, of course, The Boy Next Door. Man … The Boy Next Door. Remember that one?
And a final look at the potential use of AI to get Rotten Tomatoes scores. I did wonder if I was very very insistent and proclaimed null values as completely invalid would that “fix” the “problem” … kind of. In that it does maybe seem to get some more values filled in. The concern is that an unknowable number still end up being wrong for no real reason (e.g. Blue Lagoon being reported as 95% which is far too high), and then several (e.g. The Long Good Friday) are very consistently still reported as well. I only tested for the first 30, and I’m confident if I expanded it to the top 100 it would only get worse as you got to more and more unpopular films. Which basically means it isn’t really using the search as I had hoped or expected. Too bad. Would have been fun.
A genuine Twin Film (Who?) in this one, since J-Lo does specifically have twins in the film. It is a whole thing, they have to get a huge stroller, like with everything it melts Stan’s mind and makes him spiral into a crisis. Definitely a very funny Product Placement (What?) for an actual McFlurry sighting. Setting as a Character (Where?) for NYC. I think that is it. I think this film is just Bad unfortunately.
Learn all about childbirth? It’ll be in the Quiz. Cheerios,
The Sklogs
Bad Movie Twins 