As one of the few chick-flicks this year not starring upcoming teen “icons” like Miley Cyrus and Amanda Seyfried, The Back-up Plan seemed to be the perfect opportunity to get lost in the kind of mindless movie that portrays a passionate romance every girl dreams of, but very few ever come to find in reality.

After seeing Knocked Up, Baby Mama, and Juno, and being pleasantly surprised each time with the amount of humor that comes with unwanted pregnancy, I figured The Back-up Plan would be no different. This new genre almost always delivered a laugh.

Yet there was no humor to be found in unwanted pregnancy. Instead, the gorgeous female lead, Zoe (Jennifer Lopez), finds herself without a man during her prime producing years.

In order to fulfill her dream of having a family, she turns to her “back-up plan:” taking the route alone using a sperm donor.

The kicker comes just minutes after walking out of the doctor’s office when Zoe, newly inseminated, meets Stan (Alex O’Loughlin). O’Loughlin plays a simple heartthrob farmer that falls for Lopez before finding out that she is expecting a stranger’s child.

The story goes along to show how complicated life gets when things are done in reverse. Falling in love and having a baby is a common thing among people, but doing that backwards apparently isn’t as easy.

Though the idea behind the Back-up Plan is creative and a perfect setup for a complex story, the expectations are not fulfilled. And while this plot may seem to simply be a sweet, harmless date movie, you may be unpleasantly surprised.

In an effort to create comedy, the writers added a number of frankly disturbing scenes on what childbirth is like, one of which involves a screaming lady giving birth in an inflatable kiddie pool. The goat call that the laboring mother makes as she pushes her child out will linger in your ears for days to come, and that’s excluding the visually horrendous image of a sweating new mother.

Aside from all the barfing, screaming, crying and cravings that go along with pregnancy, the director exaggerates the idea that if your girlfriend or wife is pregnant you are doomed to be miserable.

 With every line as predictable as the next, it becomes a challenge to keep from reciting the lines aloud along with the actors.

It is debatable whether there is a single original joke throughout the entire 98-minute film.

In fact, it is noteworthy that IMDB does not have a single “memorable quote” cited for The Back-up Plan. Perhaps all the funny quotes the movie recited have already been credited to another movie.

It is a pity that The Back-up Plan was more predictable than the angsty chick-flicks starring Seyfried, who I frankly cannot picture as anyone other than the dumb blonde who tells the weather by the size of her boobs in Mean Girls, and Cyrus, who should have stuck with Disney Channel.

But the bar for romantic comedy has been set so low by these past releases (such as Dear John and The Last Song) that there is no doubt that chick flicks can only get better from here.

If you are in the mood to spend $10, you are better off spending your money on a good meal or new shirt. Money spent on The Back-Up would definitely be money wasted, and in these times of economic hardships, we all know there’s no room to throw away your cash.

Perhaps if you are a woman that has been through the ups and downs of pregnancy, you will find humor in the standard jokes passed between Lopez and O’Loughlin. But as for appealing to the majority of chick-flick viewers, teen girls included, The Back-up Plan kind of missed the ball.