The Back-Up Plan

The premise alone might induce vomiting: Jennifer Lopez plays a single Manhattanite wanting to get pregnant without waiting any longer to meet Mr. Right. So she gets pregnant. Then she meets Mr. Right. Uh oh! He’s played by Alex O’Loughlin, as a strapping a goat farmer with a dream of starting his own sustainable cheese shop. The movie itself is a cheese shop, of course, but it is not sustainable. Positioning his comely stars among such pitiably cute accessories as a wheelchair-bound Boston terrier and an enfeebled Tom Bosley, director Alan Poul exerts just enough control to ensure that sitcom stalwart Kate Angelo’s script never surrenders its shrill contrivance. Poul presides confidently over the glossy, moneyed production, and dishes up the requisite soundtrack full of orchestral rom-com pizzicato and twee heartache pop. But at least there’s a bedroom scene in which J-Lo gets asked, “Why do you have a picture of your ass?”