What not to see this weekend

At present time, J.Lo's The Back-up Plan is scoring a sad 19 per cent at Rotten Tomatoes. You can read my colleague Linda Barnard's review here. ("The excruciating hours of labour and delivery fade with the joy of new life. But the dull pain of cutie-pie pregnancy rom-com The Back-up Plan makes us suffer needlessly.")

Here are some choice quotes from other reviews:

"An absolutely odious, tone-deaf romantic comedy that wouldn't even pass muster on the Lifetime Channel's worst day."

"It suffers from sludgy pacing, flat writing and acting, and a strange and puzzling fondness for scatology and coarse language."

"It's dramatically vanilla, suffers from sit-com humor tendencies, lacks a compelling romance, and struggles to find a convincing performance."

"As romantic comedies go, this is the worst drivel I've seen since Nia Vardalos's I Hate Valentine's Day."

"There isn't a single note in this movie that rings true, resorting to cartoonish portrayals of the pregnant woman stereotype for cheap laughs. When they get really desperate, they cut to a shot of Jennifer Lopez's dog."

"Painful, unfunny, predictable, cliche, formulaic."

"Lopez works visibly hard to keep things light, while O'Loughlin's flat performance suggests that he's either deeply uncomfortable or just struggling to hide his Australian accent."

Comments

[Leon Arp]

"The Back-up Plan" was obviously written by someone trying to get out of a snow-filled driveway.