‘The Back-Up Plan’ becomes a first-rate plan

Movie Review
Rachel Weatherford

This was supposed to be in the Arrow, but it was so good they were jealous of it and decided not to publish it. Go figure! I'm joining the starving artist brigade.

In a comical twist of fate, Jennifer Lopez’s character, Zoe, the owner of a pet store, decides to be artificially inseminated after years of dating and getting no commitment. After her first and only appointment, she hails a cab and meets the guy of her dreams, a cheese farmer named Stan, played by Alex O’Loughlin. Even though it’s clear they are both attracted to each other, it takes awhile for them to enter a relationship. After they become a couple they learn that Zoe is pregnant from the in-vitro fertilization, a rarity, and getting pregnant with twins on the first time is unheard of, except, of course, in Zoe’s case.

During her time alone, Zoe gets involved in a single mother’s group, who add to the movie. One woman still breastfeeds her three-year-old, and another is a tough, in-your-face woman who is the core of one particularly wide-eyed scene later in the movie. The leader of the group is a former hippie whose funniest line is, “Some of us don’t have penis partners.”

Zoe and Stan begin to formally date shortly after Zoe joins the group. They go to the birth of one of the single mothers, who insists that Zoe is her focal point, forcing her to stand there and watch her give birth, which gives the perfectionistic Zoe a comic shake-up. The other woman’s birth scene was portrayed so well that, even though it should have been a weird moment, it was really light-hearted and easy to handle instead of awkward.

Another hilarious scene is when Zoe is at the doctor’s office. The doctor says, “There’s two heartbeats.” She replies, “The baby has two hearts?!” Then the doctor says, “No, you’re carrying twins!” And that is when Stan faints.

The couple are not without trouble. Zoe believes Stan doesn’t want her children, but later realizes she read his reactions too deeply, providing a touching commentary on the consequences of jumping to conclusions and miscommunication.
Abortion nor adoption were discussed after Zoe found Stan. Zoe’s attitude was that if Stan wouldn’t accept her children, he wouldn’t have her, and since Stan was crazy about Zoe, he accepted her children. Throughout the movie he is nervous, and another father he meets on the playground gives him some not-so-helpful and frightening advice. Of course, they get engaged after the twin girls are born. At the end of the movie, Zoe throws up and the viewers are led to believe that Zoe is pregnant again, only this time with Stan’s child instead of a stranger’s.

We get some slapstick comedy, like falling, spilling, and water-spraying. The greatest supporting actress was the dog, who alternated between begging for food and growling at Stan. The dog did not have any back legs; its back legs were a cart it used to run around with. The movie was hilarious and excellent, and it felt original instead of just being a worn-out romantic comedy movie.