- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
75The writing is sharp and the performances bright, and if you've been through the forced gestational march known as pregnancy, there are knowing laughs to be had. If you haven't, do yourself a favor and stay away.
-
75As sociology, it's skin-deep, but if you're a parent or preparing to be one, you might see yourself in a few of these folks and have a good time doing so.
-
63A cheerful comedy with just enough dark moments to create the illusion it's really about something.
-
60The overall mood is of warm reassurance, and some of it is even pretty funny.
-
60What to expect from What to Expect When You're Expecting: laughs, heart and a terrific ensemble of actors doing what they do best.
-
May 11, 201260Helmer Kirk Jones does a solid job negotiating the material and managing the few tonal shifts when an occasional dark moment emerges.
-
50Cameron Diaz and Jennifer Lopez provide the star power, but what's missing is script power.
-
May 18, 201250While it certainly isn't good, Expecting isn't as charmless as you might have feared, largely due to a cast working furiously to sell every scene.
-
50It's a sitcom-y ensemble film (complete with product placement) that feels like you're flipping around the TV dial.
-
50In the end, What to Expect, isn't an inspired movie, but a manufactured one, but one with some laughs and some moments. Plus, it has Chris Rock, who gets to liven things up as the ringleader of a beleaguered fathers' group.
-
May 17, 201250The movie turns out to be a little of everything yet succeeds only occasionally at anything.
-
50So although this multicharacter stew has a tasty morsel or two, in the aggregate it makes one long for the comparative complexity and subtlety of "Valentine's Day."
-
50What to Expect has no standout character who's consistently funny, and it must operate within the confines of a "kids are the most important thing in our lives" mentality, which is more tiresome ground, comedically speaking.
-
50The film is mostly an excuse to do a pregnancy-themed "Love Actually," an overblown symphony of birthing stories that reaches its crescendo in the maternity ward.
-
50Hopelessly old-fashioned then, but not the aggressively bad picture you might have anticipated.
-
50The only surprise is that Garry Marshall didn't direct this jumbled, star-studded kibitz and rename it "Mothers Day."
-
50Amid the would-be and actual laughs, the screenplay tries to drum up drama, but every disagreement and tension is treated superficially and summarily resolved.
-
May 17, 201245In the realms of pregnancy comedy, What to Expect When You're Expecting doesn't find new laughs, just layers on attempts at the tried-and-true ones.
-
May 26, 201240Someday Hollywood will think of women as more than fallopian tubes in heels; until then, we're stuck with this kind of project.
-
May 26, 201240Its overview of the baby experience is obscured by a family-values lens – no single/same-sex parents - resulting in an awful ensemble comedy to complete that "Valentine's Day" / "New Year's Eve" box-set, complete with sexist clichés.
-
40Rather than the engaging enlightenment of the source, the film becomes bloated by confusion.
-
40The worst thing about What to Expect When You're Expecting, director Kirk Jones' fictionalized film version, is how fake it is, how cartoonish the experiences.
-
40If What to Expect represents the best tearjerking laugh-machine that Hollywood can birth, it's probably time to get those story ideas implanted in vitro.
-
38Morning sickness afflicts most of the potential mommies. For me, the movie itself triggered the vomiting.
-
30The awfulness of What to Expect When You're Expecting, an ugly brew of guide book, reality television and romantic comedy, is of course, entirely to be expected.
-
May 20, 201230Somehow both annoyingly overstuffed and depressingly thin.
-
25What audiences should expect is a tone-deaf, superficial, charmless ensemble rom-com, focused on five attractive, but uninteresting, couples.
-
25Mostly the movie's varied storylines cough up the same platitudes: being pregnant sucks, having young children is a misery, but it's all worth it when you're holding that newborn in your arms.
-
20What you don't expect is how bad almost all of it is.
-
May 15, 201210For all the fear, loathing, and overthinking that Murkoff's bedside text engenders, its journey ends with the hopeful beginning of a new life, whereas the movie leaves you hoping for a swift end to your own.