in which i rant about The Back-Up Plan, and some goats

I used to (read: before kids) go to movies all the time.  I love going to the movies!  But now, I maybe only get to the theater once or twice a year.  Maybe.  So, on a lark today, when Paul took a surprise afternoon off, I thought, heck, I’m going to go see something. Something fluffy, something frothy, some rom-com, just me by myself, and I’m going to eat a block chocolate while I’m at it.  Given the offerings this week-end, that meant I went to see “The Back-Up Plan.”

About five minutes in, I realized I was in a Perfect Boyfriend Fantasy story for Women Who Have Had Children, a chick flick to end all chick flicks, a towering tsunami of estrogen, because what guy would ever willingly go to a movie about pregnancy?  Basically the movie promises a perfect, sexy, funny, romantic guy, who will stay with you, and still want to be with you, even while you lose your mother-loving shit with the mood swings, all while gaining two pounds a week for almost a year, and that’s just for starters.  And in this one, the kids are not even his, so he’s a saint, too.

So far, so good, I’m in, let’s do this thing. I’m ready for a shot of some feel-good estrogen romance, no I’m not on the rag, why do you ask?  And it was going along okay, J-Lo is adorable and funny and charming, Alex is adorable and funny and charming—the plot is predictable, but okay, I knew that going in.  And then it happens. We hit the MASSIVE PLOT HOLE that trashed it all for me.

But first, back-up (heh), what happened with the guy character?  What happened when the writers were coming up with ‘Stan’?  I mean, casting Alex is great, but you’ve got to give him something to work with.  It’s like they were so busy writing cutsy pregnancy moments for J-Lo, they completely forgot that romance requires TWO, count them TWO, interesting characters to really work.  Maybe ‘Stan’ was just swept away in the estrogen tide?

They did try, I think.  Sort of.  They made him a farmer.  A goat farmer.  And a cheese-maker.  And this is good, this has potential, I mean, farming is manly, and there are lots of possibilities for humor with farmer-boy and city-girl, etc.  That’s all fine.

Except we never see Stan do any farming—minus  that one lovely, shirtless, driving-the-tractor scene, of course.  But where is the mucking out the stall (shirtless) scene?  Where is the milking the goat scene?  Where is the, I don’t know, ANY farming of any kind scene?  Heck, we never even see him eat any of the cheese he makes.  (And do you know how much WORK it would take, how many workers you’d have to have, to make as many cheeses as he’s got in his aging room?  That was a fuck load of cheese!  Making cheese takes a lot of freaking work!  And oh, they never mention the obvious joke—and since it was all about obvious jokes—pregant women aren’t supposed to eat soft cheeses, goat cheese, fresh cheese, it has something to do with the bacteria or something, I never understood it.  I guess that joke (that she never eats his cheese?) hit the cutting room floor.  But I digress.)

Actually, Stan never really does anything at all.  Except react to Jennifer. That’s his entire character and most of his jokes—reactions to the insanity of pregnancy, reacations to J-Lo’s impossible cuteness, reactions to the nuttiness of the situation.  His job is to stay, no matter how whacked the preggo lady gets.  Which he does.  Stan exists as a loving mirror for pregnant women everywhere to look into when they want to believe that they are really still desirable.

And okay, it’s hokey, but it was still going to probably work for me on a shallow level except for one thing, that massive plot hole I mentioned.

I said that he’s a goat farmer, right?  Being a goat farmer myself, and on nowhere near the scale that Stan is, I’ve had every disgusting body fluid that a goat can produce on me at some point, had my hand up to the forearm inside a goat, turning a baby around, I’ve birthed ‘em, burned their horns off—I haven’t killed them or castrated them, but you know Stan, with the size of his goat operation, Stan would have done these things.  Because this is what being a goat farmer IS.

There is no way in hell a goat farmer is going to be grossed out, or even blink, at pregnancy, birth, or body fluids.

But half of the jokes in this movie are the requisite pregnancy gross-out moments.

COME ON PEOPLE, WHO WROTE THIS THING????  Obviously no one who knows any real goat farmers.

It would be so easy to fix.  Just give him a different job.  Make him a vegetable farmer.  Make him a dog trainer.  Whatever.

OR.  Why not let him man up and actually be a farmer?  Let him NOT be grossed out when she totally is.  That would have been so much more interesting than yet another Man Passes Out In The OB-GYN Office scene.  Please.  Haven’t we seen that enough times already?  Heck, let him deliver the baby!  Wouldn’t that have been cool?  Get them stuck in an elevator or something, I don’t know.  Don’t they pay writers hundreds of thousands of dollars to think up this stuff?

(And another thing.  Dairy goats cann’t run mixed herds, that is, you don’t keep the bucks with the does, or else you get bucky-smelling milk, which you do not want—but which Stan totally has with that herd of goats we get a brief glimpse of.  Also, you don’t want diary goats with horns, because you’re going to get gored, sooner or later, handling them every day the way a goat farmer must do.  But I’m willing to let all that slide, okay?  The body fluid thing, no.)

I do not blame Mr. O’Loughlin for these faults.  We know he can play a farmer very well, just watch the wonderful, Australian, The Oyster Farmer, a superior movie in every way to the Back-Up Plan.  I’m serious, go watch it, it’s hilarious and moving and worth your time.  We also know Alex can play a strong, manly-but-vulnerable man as the second character to a Super-Strong woman character as in the amazing Mary Bryant, the title character played by the astonishing Romola Garai.  And you should totally see that, except get ready to have your heart ripped out.  Several times.

No, I totally blame the writers for forgetting to make Stan an interesting character.  Or maybe it was the producers for cutting all his scenes?

But most especially, for letting a goat farmer faint at the sight of a little vaginal blood.

As Paul said, after hearing this rant (and I rant because I may not get to the theater for another movie for months and months and I’m sad because I didn’t get my movie fix):

I guess there aren’t that many goats in L.A.