J Lo's comedy 'Back-up Plan' fails to deliver

Here's a romantic comedy that thinks if a woman vomiting once is funny, it'll be twice as funny if she vomits again.

Or that if a man "accidentally" falling down is funny once, it'll be a real hoot if he falls down again. (Imagine the hilarity when several people "accidentally" fall down!)

Oh, stop, please! My sides are killing me! Oh, wait. That's my head, not my sides.

"The Back-up Plan" casts romance and pregnancy in such an abysmally dismal light, that watching it instantly becomes the most effective form of birth control since the invention of the Pill.

It stars Jennifer Lopez as Zoe, a single New Yorker racing against her biological clock. Too impatient to wait for Mr. Right, she opts for Mr. Right Now, an unknown sperm donor who supplies the necessary component for her artificial insemination.

Wouldn't you know it? On the very day this deed gets done, she dashes into a cab at the same time a handsome man enters the other side.

He's Stan, played by the charismatic Alex O'Loughlin. He makes organic cheeses on his upstate farm and sells them as a New York street vendor. The moment he lays eyes on Zoe, he's smitten and follows her around, trying to pique her interest in dairy.

Zoe confesses to her best friend Mona (Michaela Watkins) - who just might be the most irritating and least valuable best pal a Hollywood character ever had - that she's keeping Stan at arm's length, until she finds out if her insemination has worked.

This becomes complicated when her injured pet dog, trundling around her apartment with wheels supporting his hind end, eats her pregnancy indicator. (Cue the laughs!)

Finally, just as Zoe seems to have run into the right guy to share her life with, she discovers that she's pregnant with twins. By someone she never even met.

"The Back-up Plan" clearly means to preach the Hollywood gospel of love-conquers-all, but at no point in this creaky collection of clichés is there a genuine moment of affection or bonding, just characters going through cycles of separations and reunions as dictated by the vapid screenplay.

Perhaps not so surprising, "Back-up Plan" comes from two people making their feature film debut after years of working in television sitcoms.

Screenwriter Katie Angelo ("Will & Grace," plus others) employs every sitcommy shenanigan she can muster.

(Note to Ms. Angelo: The spit-take - where someone spits out food or beverages to communicate surprise - is so completely devoid of comic wit that Garry Marshall banned it from all of his famous sitcoms, such as "Happy Days.")

Director Alan Poul ("Swing Town" and "Big Love") illustrates no knack for luring laughs out of silver-screen rom-coms.

One of the movie's big scenes involves a screaming woman giving birth in a child's wading pool while her support group of dedicated single mothers holds her down and utters wacky New Age chants.

It goes beyond unfunny. The shrill and unsettling sequence borders on ear and eye abuse.

Former TV sitcom stars Linda ("Alice") Lavin and Tom ("Happy Days") Bosley are stuck in this travesty, respectively as Zoe's concerned Nana and Nana's boyfriend of many years.

That leaves Aussie actor O'Loughlin as the movie's single non-grating entity. As Stan, O'Loughlin possesses a pleasant and comfortable screen presence, and manages to transcend the drivel his character utters.

He doesn't even spit.

"The Back-up Plan"Rating: #9733;Starring: Jennifer Lopez, Alex O'Loughlin, Robert Kline, Michaela Watkins, Eric Christian OlsenDirected by: Alan PoulOther: A CBS Films release. Rated PG-13 for language, sexual references. 106 minutes