What to Expect When You're Expecting: movie review

( PG-13 ) ( Monitor Movie Guide )

'Expecting' is a series of clichéd situations about impending pregnancy and the differences between men and women.

|
Melissa Moseley/Lionsgate/AP
'What to Expect When You're Expecting' has star power, but not much else.

Babies are cute and expectant parents often aren’t. That kind of sums up “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” derived (pretty much in title only) from the bestselling parenthood manual. As movies-from-manuals go, I much prefer Woody Allen’s “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex.”

Cameron Diaz and Jennifer Lopez provide the star power, but what’s missing is script power – the movie is a series of clichéd situations about impending pregnancy and how emotionally far apart men and women are when it comes to parenthood. The only subplot with any traction is the one between Anna Kendrick and Chace Crawford, playing rival food- truck chefs. They belong on The Food Network. Grade: C (Rated PG-13 for crude and sexual content, thematic elements and language.)

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to What to Expect When You're Expecting: movie review
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Movies/2012/0518/What-to-Expect-When-You-re-Expecting-movie-review
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe