What to Expect When You're Expecting: Critic Reviews

Cute couple Kendrick and Crawford are completely lost at sea. But the guys in the Dudes Group have the worst of it - they are a whiny, unappealing bunch through and through.

Diaz's plotline seems to revolve solely around an argument with Morrison over the merits of circumcision. She's pro-cut. He's fanatically anti-cut. Clearly, as is the film's editor.

What to Expect When You're Expecting provides a snapshot of contemporary anxieties about imminent parenthood, but it may be more worthwhile as a document for future pop culture scholars to use to understand what was trendy in 2012.

The charismatic cast (particularly Banks and Lopez) manage to find the humanity in their cliched roles but they can't transcend all the surface-level schmaltz on display here.

Provides good chuckles and heartfelt drama - paired with an equal amount of familiar gags and flat story ideas.

What To Expect When You're Expecting delivers a stale plot, mostly underwritten characters and almost no joy. Expect little and you may not be entirely disappointed.

The highs, lows, unexpected joys and totally expected pains of pregnancy get a comprehensive going over in this consistently funny, warm-hearted ensemble comedy.

Too bad you can't watch What to Expect When You're Expecting the way most people read the best-selling self-help book: by skipping the unnecessary bits and diving into the important stuff.

A dirty diaper bag of sex jokes, sentimental mush, cartoonish claptrap and weary parent-to-be cliches.

Those who don't have children would find it rather agonising, while those who do might not wish to pay a babysitter for the pleasure of seeing a film about nappies and epidurals.

I wasn't expecting how warmly I'd feel towards the characters by the end of the movie - and I certainly wasn't expecting to tear up a little bit during one of the couple's denouements. How in hell did that happen?

These women have nothing that interesting to offer and their husbands are just as dull.

Appears at first to be a superficial appetizer with little on its mind beyond cliche and predictable formula...but some genuine tenderness surfaces..and Banks is terrific.

The creation of human life is the best show you could ever see and What to Expect... the book is a great guide to that process. However the movie adaptation is a shallow concept piece, lazy in its approach and moronic in its execution.

Like childbirth, (it's) very messy and painful at times. But like raising children, there will be a few tears and a few laughs and somehow you'll get through it.

The young Hollywood executives of today were weaned on television's last golden era - the heady days of 'Friends' and 'Ally McBeal' and 'Seinfeld' - and the films now being greenlit seem to come with a mandate for a small-screen mindset and aesthetic.

Messy? Complicated? Nah. Turns out all you should expect when you're expecting is to live in the midst of a nine-month sitcom.

This terrible comedy is a return to the cycle of late 1980s obscoms, movies packed with obstetric detail celebrating the wonders of parenthood.

The eggs are there; someone just forgot to fertilise them.

The cast gives it their all, but this tepid dramedy lacks fervour and originality.

As rom-coms go, this one is definitely stillborn.

In the end there is enough pregnancy humour to give audiences a good old belly laugh.

It's exactly what we expected it to be. If you're going to have a baby it'd be a good thing to watch. It shows all the things people say to you.

Favouring pratfalls over wit and insight, the picture offers only occasional respite in a "dudes group" of dads who meet in the park with their offspring, led by Chris Rock.

Mutual loathing and eye-rolling sustain - horribly - many of the couples involved.