OK, I just have to ask: Is there any film genre more impoverished than romantic comedy?
Or maybe I should take it one step further, and pose a different question: Are our romantic fantasies really so threadbare that a movie like “The Back-Up Plan” qualifies as effective escapism?
Maybe so. Maybe it’s enough, in our era of downsized expectations, to settle for an attractive but pointless chain of contrivances, to embrace a love story simply because the people are pretty, the jokes familiar and the outcome preordained.
Maybe, in a time of political upheaval and diminished expectations, there’s something comforting about a genre that never campaigns on a platform of change.