Labor Pains

Pains succeeds because of Lohan. As Thea, a publishing-house secretary living on the financial brink who rashly lies that she's pregnant just before her boss fires her, Lohan is a bright light in the center of an otherwise a fair-to-middling telefilm.

The movie’s premise--a secretary who feigns pregnancy to avoid being fired--isn’t terrible and neither is Ms. Lohan. Mostly because of how her part was written, it takes too long for Ms. Lohan to shed her Hollywood reputation and wan, stilted demeanor and get into the role.

If you don't think too hard about it--and don't mind seeing every single romantic movie cliche crammed in two hours--then you will find Labor Pains to be less painful than actual birth.

All told, it's a rather ignominious birthing process for a movie that isn't painful, necessarily, but delivers little that's worth paying admission to see, either.

Very little here feels original or even pregnancy-specific, from the farcically miserable boss (Chris Parnell, uncharacteristically unfunny, even when playing off a small dog) to the sassy best friend (Cheryl Hines, trying her best and smoking up a storm) to the see-it-from-a-mile-away office romance that threatens to unravel once the truth is revealed.