Romantic comedy centered on the family and the need to have children, The Back-Up Plan is similar to all these nice and humorous feature films where a pregnancy turns almost into the catastrophe. A remainder which could have been drinkable, but the thirty last minutes give particularly a bad taste to the project.

In the Big Apple, the rate of the daily newspaper is unrestrained. Not being able to resist the call of the biological clock, a single woman (played by Jennifer Lopez) who works in a pet shop decides to get artificially inseminated. While leaving the private clinic, she falls on a cheese salesman (played by Alex O’ Loughlin) who has ambition. The love is in the air, but how will the new boyfriend react in front of the desires of his soft woman?

For a few years, a baby-boom has been in vogue. That explains many films on the subject. Arriving a little late (the high point was undoubtedly in 2008 with the release of several interchangeable motion pictures, including a certain Baby Mama with Tina Fey), The Back-Up Plan seeks to benefit from the wave. But without really making movement, which does not leave any chance to the project to rise completely.

Beginning ingenuously in the lovesong between two too compatible individuals who have fun to put a spoke on the other’s wheel to delay their union, this first realization in the cinema of Alan Poul (who worked on the screenplay of some episodes from the TV series Six Feet Under) surprises somewhat. Although the result does not transcend the kind, the well brought dialogs and the touching situations make us forget the disappointing trailer. The potential to divert until the conclusion is there, appearing in particular via two beings that go well together and a nice puppy with casters.

The last portion of the work destroys completely these aspirations however. Around the couple there is a horde of uninteresting characters who take more and more importance, of which the friends of heroin who seek to naturally deliver a baby. This embarrassing sequence is only the beginning of the end, making multiple indigestible moments succeed, re-orientating the tangent of the production towards something less salubrious and digestible. Suddenly, the bad memory of Nine Months (the dreadful remake with Hugh Grant) remade surface, which is far from being a good thing.

Not having given news since Bordertown in 2007, Jennifer Lopez puts up perfectly with this character who could have returned to Sandra Bullock. The actress is conscious that she will find never again her beautiful roles as the one she held in the sensual Out of Sight directed by Steven Soderbergh. This is why she benefits from each presence in front of the camera to smile and use her charm which is far from being negligible. At her sides, Alex O’ Loughlin develops such a charismatic personality, creating a duet which functions rather well. There is at least that of positive.

Banal goods which seem to come from an assembly line, The Back-Up Plan finally fill its most elementary objective: to transform nearly two hours of the existence into a large nothing, which is not unpleasant but without any interest finally. The hostesses in Leap Year and When in Rome will be filled. The others will not want to be even turned over in front of the poster.