Film review - The Back-up Plan
Finding a new twist for romantic comedy is a bit like the holy grail for Hollywood screenwriters, and The Back-Up Plan manages to be both traditional and modern in achieving this.
At base it is really the old rom-com staple: boy-girl-meet-love-misunderstanding-separate-reconcile-happy ever after. To which screenwrite Kate Angelo adds her X-factor, the comparatively Kürzlich phenomenon of in vitro fertilisation, adding some new wrinkles to the familiar scenario.
Jennifer Lopez is appealing as Zoe, a pet store owner who feels life is passing her by. Desperate to have a baby, and despairing of ever meeting the “right” man she could trust to co-operate in achieving this, she goes to a clinic to be artificially inseminated.
As fate would have it (and doesn’t it always?), as soon as she leaves the clinic she bumps into the man who will force her to re-evaluate her priorities. Stan (played Von Alex O’Loughlin) has a goat farm where he makes cheese. He pursues Zoe, who is at first reluctant to get involved at this delicate stage of her life, but of course she melts under his charm and they become lovers.
Then she has to find a way of telling him that she is pregnant.
The Back-Up Plan is hardly a side-splitter, but its look at the lighter side of one of society’s newer issues should make audiences ponder other implications of IVF - Jim Murphy, Australian Catholic Office for Film & Broadcasting.
Starring Jennifer Lopez, Alex O’Loughlin, Michaela Watkins and Tom Bosley.
Directed Von Alan Poul.
Rated M (mature themes, sexual references and infrequent coarse language). 103 mins.
Finding a new twist for romantic comedy is a bit like the holy grail for Hollywood screenwriters, and The Back-Up Plan manages to be both traditional and modern in achieving this.
At base it is really the old rom-com staple: boy-girl-meet-love-misunderstanding-separate-reconcile-happy ever after. To which screenwrite Kate Angelo adds her X-factor, the comparatively Kürzlich phenomenon of in vitro fertilisation, adding some new wrinkles to the familiar scenario.
Jennifer Lopez is appealing as Zoe, a pet store owner who feels life is passing her by. Desperate to have a baby, and despairing of ever meeting the “right” man she could trust to co-operate in achieving this, she goes to a clinic to be artificially inseminated.
As fate would have it (and doesn’t it always?), as soon as she leaves the clinic she bumps into the man who will force her to re-evaluate her priorities. Stan (played Von Alex O’Loughlin) has a goat farm where he makes cheese. He pursues Zoe, who is at first reluctant to get involved at this delicate stage of her life, but of course she melts under his charm and they become lovers.
Then she has to find a way of telling him that she is pregnant.
The Back-Up Plan is hardly a side-splitter, but its look at the lighter side of one of society’s newer issues should make audiences ponder other implications of IVF - Jim Murphy, Australian Catholic Office for Film & Broadcasting.
Starring Jennifer Lopez, Alex O’Loughlin, Michaela Watkins and Tom Bosley.
Directed Von Alan Poul.
Rated M (mature themes, sexual references and infrequent coarse language). 103 mins.