Signis

What to Expect When You’re Expecting

(JPEG)

US, 2011, Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Lopez, Elizabeth Banks, Anna Kendrick, Brooklyn Decker. Directed by Kirk Jones.

Some films need specialist backgrounds for review, some expertise in a particular area. For this one, out go all the men, except for those who need to have some empathy for their pregnant wives or partners, or to learn to be empathetic. Then out go the men who have had no first-hand experience with pregnant women. Then there are the rest. This review is coming from one of the rest. With as much empathy as possible.

As from the tone of the title, it is clear that this is a mixture of humour and self-help. It seems very frothy at times, even flippant. But, anyone in need of serious advice would not be asking it of this film. It would be a false expectation. They would be seeking out experts and reading serious material. So, this light touch film is a chance for women who have experienced or are experiencing pregnancy to respond emotionally to the on-screen stories, compare their own pregnancies and have a laugh or a weep.

Actually, it is some of the more ‘weeping’ sequences that stay in the mind, especially a miscarriage, the grief of the mother, her attitude towards the father of the baby (they are not married) and the behaviour of the father.

There is also an adoption story, featuring Jennifer Lopez and Rodrigo Santoro, the question of eagerness and readiness, tensions, the interviews by the agency and, in this case, couples going to Ethiopia under the auspices of the agency to participate in a religious ritual with national and cultural overtones, to receive their babies.

There is comedy with Elizabeth Banks as a breast-feeding expert with a business who collapses in mid-address to a conference, throwing all her sweetness and light sentiments out the window, and beyond. There is comedy with Cameron Diaz as a fitness expert with her own TV show and audiences following her pregnancy.

There is also the story of an older man with a trophy wife, Denis Quaid and Brooklyn Decker. She is pregnant with twins, keeps fit, is more common-sensed than we might have thought and comes through the pregnancy with calm and delight.

There is also an assortment of fathers, especially a group who walk their babies in prams in the park.

At times, it seems like comedy soufflé, all colourful, smart rom-com dialogue, almost cliché situations. But, thinking about it afterwards, there seems to have been more than met the eye.

Peter Malone