You have the ensemble part, with multiple threads of narrowly associated narratives. You have the comedy part, served with cheap toilet humour and breast-feeding jokes. Then you have the build-up to the climactic and simultaneous delivery of babies presented in an overly dramatic and romanticised fashion.
The film follows the lives of five loosely related couples as they tackle pregancy's twists and turns. The couples include fitness guru Jules (Cameron Diaz) and Evan (Matthew Morrison), child-advice author Wendy (Elizabeth Banks) and husband, Gary (Ben Falcone), Gary's father, Ramsey (Dennis Quaid) and younger wife, Skyler (Brooklyn Decker), photographer Holly (Jennifer Lopez) and hubby, Alex (Rodrigo Santoro) and chefs Rosie (Anna Kendrick) and Marco (Chace Crawford).
Comedian Chris Rock's Vic - with all his expected brutally vulgar honesty - and his "dudes group" offers a hilarious, if not unrealistic and stereotypical, view of the incompetencies of fathers as child tending parents.
Perhaps, What to Expect When You're Watching a Film About Expecting would be a more apt title since the film has everything you'd expect. And nothing more.
Contains mature subject matter
YP Rating: 2/5