The Back-up Plan
Jennifer Lopez plays Zoe, a 30-something pet-store owner who has decided to go it alone when it comes to having a baby. Alex O'Loughlin co-stars as Stan, the pushy-charming cheese merchant she keeps bumping into. Director Alan Poul, a TV vet (Big Love, Swingtown), commendably makes the most of what he has to work with. That would be Lopez -- who is gorgeous, a little overdressed for a Manhattan pet-store owner and properly comically nonplussed. But for all the profanity (quite a bit) and sexual sass, The Back-up Plan plays like a TV movie, and there isn't much chemistry between the leads.
City Island stars Andy Garcia as a prison security guard married to a secretary (Julianna Margulies). Their daughter (Dominik Garcia-Lorido, Garcia's real-life daughter) has lost her scholarship and taken up stripping to make money. Their son (Ezra Miller), is a high-school teenager in the midst of discovering his sexuality. New York writer-director Raymond De Felitta (The Thing About My Folks) succeeds in gathering a very entertaining ensemble and eliciting funny melodrama.
