The Back-Up Plan (2010)

Zoe runs a pet shop. She has tired of the search for a suitable man, so she visits a clinic and is inseminated, and on that same afternoon she shares a taxi with Stan. This is the entire engine of The Back-Up Plan, a 2010 romantic comedy that treats a deliberate pregnancy as a scheduling conflict instead of a decision with weight. Alan Poul directs with the efficiency of a man delivering furniture. Jennifer Lopez carries the thing on charm and physical comedy, and the critics mostly agreed she was the only part worth keeping, which is a polite way of saying the script was not. It opened at number one on its Friday and finished with $77.5 million against a $35 million budget. The marketplace has spoken, and the marketplace has no opinions.

The premise gestures toward a woman arranging her own life on her own terms. The third act does not. Zoe gets the man, the twins, the proposal, and a husband whose new restaurant sits beside her pet shop, and the film presents this as resolution instead of retreat. There is a Single Mothers and Proud support group, but it exists to serve as a comic obstacle, a room of women who turn on Zoe the moment she acquires a boyfriend. Lopez is a Latina headliner, and Anthony Anderson and Noureen DeWulf fill supporting slots, standard ensemble practice with not a syllable of commentary attached.

Everything else on the ledger is empty. No queer characters. No climate anxiety. No critique of money, though the film ends in a small-business ribbon cutting and clearly believes in the entrepreneur. No body-image messaging beyond the reliable comedy of a pregnant woman vomiting into a trash can. No neurodivergent characters, no historical record to revise, no sermon to deliver. The Back-Up Plan wants nothing from us but a ticket. Ebert gave it one star and called it an unendurable commercial about beautiful people with great lifestyles, which is harsh, accurate, and beside the point. It is a film with no argument to make and no interest in making one.