Here's a brief summary of this mess of a film. A young waitress and pie-maker is trapped in an unhappy marriage. After becoming pregnant, she mopes around and has an affair for about an hour and a half, after which all her problems are solved by cute baby footage and a kindly old moneybags ex machina.
Plotting, as you may have guessed from the above summary, suffered from the writer's obvious lack of talent. In terms of dramatic action, the movie basically introduced its premise (a pregnant woman in an unhappy situation has an affair with her doctor), stagnated for an extended period of time, and then resolved everything suddenly at the end as Earl, Dr. Pomatter, and Old Joe simultaneously vanish in a puff of smoke. This is not how you make a plot!
I can't really comment on characterization in this film, because there weren't any characters. The worst portrayal was the husband Earl, a ridiculously exaggerated figure with no redeeming qualities or really any qualities at all beyond being mean. The lead character was also very poorly drawn – I think she was supposed to represent a strong character trapped in a bad situation, but in reality she did almost nothing for the whole movie before suddenly finding her true calling as a mother. She didn't develop in any way – basically she just suffered for a while and then had all her problems solved by money and a divorce. The doctor is as much of an empty shell as everyone else. Pretty much all he does is make doctor-like remarks that sound about as realistic as the setup for a pornographic scene, mixed with unconvincing declarations of feeling. I suppose he is supposed to seem sincere and romantic, but it just doesn't work.
Plotting, as you may have guessed from the above summary, suffered from the writer's obvious lack of talent. In terms of dramatic action, the movie basically introduced its premise (a pregnant woman in an unhappy situation has an affair with her doctor), stagnated for an extended period of time, and then resolved everything suddenly at the end as Earl, Dr. Pomatter, and Old Joe simultaneously vanish in a puff of smoke. This is not how you make a plot!
I can't really comment on characterization in this film, because there weren't any characters. The worst portrayal was the husband Earl, a ridiculously exaggerated figure with no redeeming qualities or really any qualities at all beyond being mean. The lead character was also very poorly drawn – I think she was supposed to represent a strong character trapped in a bad situation, but in reality she did almost nothing for the whole movie before suddenly finding her true calling as a mother. She didn't develop in any way – basically she just suffered for a while and then had all her problems solved by money and a divorce. The doctor is as much of an empty shell as everyone else. Pretty much all he does is make doctor-like remarks that sound about as realistic as the setup for a pornographic scene, mixed with unconvincing declarations of feeling. I suppose he is supposed to seem sincere and romantic, but it just doesn't work.