Like Gary Marshall's recent "New Year's Eve," "What to Expect When You're Expecting" has a large, star-filled cast to tell the multiple stories of expectant parents. Based on the perennial best-seller by Heidi Murkoff that functions as a guidebook/bible for parents-to-be, the movie features five Atlanta, Georgia,-based couples who are all expecting at the same time.
But will "What to Expect When You're Expecting" manage to do more than just flit through a series of comic stories about having babies? The five couples are:
* Holly (Jennifer Lopez) and Alex (Rodrigo Santoro), who aren't on the same page about adopting.
* Jules (Cameron Diaz) and Evan (Matthew Morrison), who can't agree on whether to circumcise their child.
* Ramsey (Dennis Quaid) and his trophy wife Skyler (Brooklyn Decker), who are expecting their first child together.
* Wendy (Elizabeth Banks ), a breast-feeding expert who is completely sure about what makes a great mother -- until she gets pregnant. Wendy's husband Colin (Ben Falcone) is concerned that his father Ramsey and his wife are also expecting.
* Rosie (Anna Kendrick) and Marco (Chace Crawford), rival food-truck owners who have an unexpected pregnancy.
* "What to Expect When You're Expecting" also features Chris Rock, who is the guru to a group of expectant fathers.
* Director Kirk Jones has some nice comedies under his belt ("Waking Ned Devine," "Nanny McPhee," and "Everybody's Fine"), so maybe the episodic nature will not be a drawback in this film.
The water breaking in a public place at an inopportune time, the mad rush to the hospital, a wife screaming curses at her husband as she bears down -- all these have long been staples of movies about having babies. With these many couples and story angles, the audience is sure to have to witness one of these scenes at least once. But five times? Hopefully not.
The best thing "What to Expect When You're Expecting" could deliver is something altogether unexpected: something funny and also meaningful to say about having a baby.
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