CHICAGO – Excelsior! Comic book legend Stan Lee’s famous exclamation puts a fine point on the third and final play of Mark Pracht’s FOUR COLOR TRILOGY, “The House of Ideas,” presented by and staged at City Lit Theater in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood. For tickets/details, click HOUSE OF IDEAS.
No Redeeming Quality to Jennifer Lopez’s ‘The Back-up Plan’
CHICAGO – “The Back-up Plan,” starring Jennifer Lopez, is spectacularly bad. Filled with leaden, supposedly comedic lines, stupid generalities and no basis in reality, this film ranks first in class for worst of 2010 so far.
Rating: 0.0/5.0 |
J-Lo portrays J-Zoe, a successful pet store owner in Manhattan who never seems to have to work. She has made a big decision – her “back-up plan” – to have a baby through artificial insemination due to a ticking biological clock and no relationship. Her wacky doctor (Robert Klein) gets her through the procedure, but the intrepid small business owner is convinced it hasn’t worked.
Enter the hunky cheese maker named Stan (Alex O’Loughlin, and yes, he is a cheese maker), who meets J-Zoe when they both hail the same cab. Faster than you can say crazy first date, the couple becomes a coosome twosome, right about at the same time that J-Zoe finds out she’s pregnant with twins.
It is up to J-Zoe to tell her newly minted boyfriend her situation, much to the chagrin of her loyal Nana (Linda Lavin from TV’s “Alice”) and Nana’s boyfriend of 22 years (Tom Bosley of TV’s “Happy Days”). When those 1970s sitcom stars can’t help you, how about Mona (Michaela Watkins), who has all the time in the world to be with J-Zoe while raising four kids of her own.
When Stan finally does find out, instead of running for the hills he actually accepts and embraces the notion of impending fatherhood (after knowing J-Zoe for approximately two weeks, whatta guy). He even finds his own advice mate, the aptly credited Playground Dad (Anthony Anderson) who provides the comic relief with poop jokes. Can these wild middle age kids embrace parenthood and each other at the same time?
Photo Credit: © 2010 CBS Films, Inc. |