What to Expect When You're Expecting: Critic Reviews

As 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.

The overall mood is of warm reassurance, and some of it is even pretty funny.

Someday Hollywood will think of women as more than fallopian tubes in heels; until then, we're stuck with this kind of project.

What audiences should expect is a tone-deaf, superficial, charmless ensemble rom-com, focused on five attractive, but uninteresting, couples.

The movie turns out to be a little of everything yet succeeds only occasionally at anything.

The 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.

For 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.

What you don't expect is how bad almost all of it is.

Everything that happens in the multiple story lines is entirely predictable; the only question is when.

The plot nearly stalls with gridlock. It's clever but the stories are thin soup.

Technically the genre isn't beneath contempt. But this movie is.

It makes one long for the comparative complexity and subtlety of Valentine's Day.

An amiable but disjointed movie with too many stories and not enough storytelling.

"What to Expect" rolls out this shocking revelation: Having kids is a messy and complicated process.

Some of the pregnancies are played for laughs, others are depicted more melodramatically. It's a mishmash of mediocrity.

Helmer Kirk Jones does a solid job negotiating the material and managing the few tonal shifts when an occasional dark moment emerges.

The film is dully shot and so predictably plotted, you could tick off the items like you're packing a bag for the delivery room.

What to Expect When You're Expecting is pretty much what you'd expect. It plays to its target audience with a vengeance, and that audience would be people expecting kids or who can remember their own pre-parenthood jitters.

Patently contrived to deliver the safer side of pregnancy-related humor over the course of five tidily intersecting plot lines.

It's a sitcom-y ensemble film (complete with product placement) that feels like you're flipping around the TV dial.

Amid the would-be and actual laughs, the screenplay tries to drum up drama, but every disagreement and tension is treated superficially and summarily resolved.

A good-looking cast of popular actors can only do so much with material that's superficial and sitcommy.

The still-born What To Expect... is an all-star dud that could be easily confused with Valentine's Day and New Year's Eve, except for the absence of Ashton Kutcher.

Exactly what you'd expect. And that's not a good thing.