What To Expect When You`re Expecting isn`t a single story, so much as five different narratives slapped together in an episodic nature. There`s the celebrity couple (Cameron Diaz and Matthew Morrison) who hook up after getting down; the stable couple who really wants a baby (Ben Falcone and Elizabeth Banks); the obligatory wayward teenage couple (Anne Kendrick and Chace Crawford)… but after a while, the characters blend into each other with little to distinguish the story lines apart from their looks.
And therein lies the primary flaw of What To Expect When You`re Expecting. Director Kirk Jones forgot to read the memo that all romantic comedies engage on a simple premise: make us care. The film is so episodic, the characters so generic, and the premises so lacking in drama that the film get excruciatingly banal after the halfway point. This is made even worse by the fact that the film flits back and forth between storylines like a toddler with attention-deficit disorder, so that none of the characters really get to grow on us. The only glimmer of amusement to be derived from this ordeal is in the form of Chris Rock, who gets approximately five minutes of screen time with all the best lines, which only reveals how few good jokes there are in this film.
If you`re a couple trying to fertilize, or you really love cute babies, What To Expect When You`re Expecting will be passably entertaining, with PG-13 humour, a good looking cast and babies galore. For the rest of us though, the film will probably be as tedious as two hours of leafing through baby photo albums at an acquaintance`s house.
Summary: Delivers, but below expectations.
Rating: 2/5 stars