What to Expect When You're Expecting

This is a movie review... if you actually want to know about what to expect when you're pregnant, you'd better go somewhere else because it'll be awhile before I have firsthand experience.

Anyhoo.

Last night my sister and I wanted to watch a fun movie. "What to Expect" was on Netflix, and I'd recently seen some facebook comments declaring that it was surprisingly good. So we decided to indulge... and were really glad we did.

Like "Valentine's Day" it's a movie that takes a common experience and follows the story of people going through it in all stages of life, occasionally crossing paths with the other characters. In this case it's the journey  of becoming parents, from unexpected to long awaited, from adoption to miscarriage, from laughably easy to crazy hard... and covering all ages of couples.

It's a movie about (mostly) beautiful people who are fairly financially secure (even when they loose jobs) but tries to be relevant while providing eye candy. It's message is simple - parenting is hard, whether you're ready for it or not, but it's worth it. It's really worth it. You have to compromise, you have to manage expectations, and you have to take what comes in stride while throwing preconceived notions out the window.

And it's a guy movie too. The best subplot is the Dad group that meets once a week and, "Like Fight Club" what happens there, stays there. Experienced dads, loaded up with kids, go walking in the park, commiserate, celebrate, and mentor a new daddy-to-be in what it's all about.

 It's a comedy that dares to be touchingly serious when it should, and reminds us that laughter rather than stress is the best way to handle most of life.

The youngest couple in the film is in their early twenties, and that's really where the target audience should begin. There's innuendo in this film, but nothing that would shock anyone who knows how babies are made and takes a realistic view about the whole thing. It's not going to interest the younger teen crowd, but I think it's definitely a good film for anyone who is hoping to someday be a parent.

WARNING. This film contains really cute babies.