AT FIRST YOU'LL FEEL curious. After all, some people you like (Elizabeth Banks, Chris Rock, Thomas Lennon) are in this thing. You'll also experience doubt. (Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Lopez, and childbirth are in this thing.) And by the time the poorly interconnected characters all realize they're pregnant, your nausea will kick in.

What to Expect When You're Expecting is based on a self-help book, so it could've plucked interesting pregnancy stories from anywhere—but instead, it opts for a bunch of hetero-normative crap. Your progressive shoulders might tense up. As you reach the middle of the movie, you'll write yourself a mental note to cut Planned Parenthood a check, because life experience has taught us that not all unwanted pregnancies are cherished, despite this movie's insistence to the contrary. And toward the end of the film, as petite actresses scream and sweat their prosthetic bellies away, you'll breathe a sigh of relief: Whether you want children or have children or not, at least the movie is over, you haven't learned anything, and your life is in no way changed.

What to Expect isn’t dumb because I hate pregnancy or women who want to have babies. And really, it could’ve been worse. But the I-can’t-believe-this-is-a-genre genre of nonfiction-self-help-book-turned-clunky-multi-story-rom-com sucks. So. You’ll get what you expect.