Unexpected

2015 "No one is ever really prepared."
5.8| 1h26m| R| en| More Info
Released: 24 July 2015 Released
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Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

An inner-city high school teacher discovers she is pregnant at the same time as one of her most promising students and the two develop an unlikely friendship while struggling to navigate their unexpected pregnancies.

Genre

Drama, Comedy

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Unexpected (2015) is now streaming with subscription on Freevee

Director

Kris Rey

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Unexpected Audience Reviews

Ehirerapp Waste of time
Console best movie i've ever seen.
Derry Herrera Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.
Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.
Larry Silverstein I'm surprised at the 5.5 rating for this film, as I found it to be filled with razor sharp dialogue that rang true to life, laced with humor but also raised some serious social issues, mainly the conflict families face with a newborn when they don't have long term maternity leave available.The most talented actress Cobie Smulders is excellent here as Samantha, a high school science teacher, in Chicago, who's working for a school scheduled to close at the end of the semester. She's been in a long term relationship with John (Anders Holm), when she unexpectedly discovers she's pregnant. They decide to quickly marry at the local courthouse, and you can see they have indeed a loving relationship.At the same time, one of Samantha's senior students, Jasmine, superbly portrayed by Gail Bean (an actress to watch in the future), finds out she's pregnant as well. This will subsequently bring Samantha and Jasmine closer together, and Samantha will try to help her student apply for college and hopefully build a more solid future.Initially, I thought things in the movie were perhaps too sugary sweet, but as it progressed there were conflicts that arose, and it all came down to a most poignant ending, in my opinion.All in all, I found this to be an exceptional indie, filled with most solid performances, good direction from Kris Swanberg, who also wrote the true-to-life script with Megan Mercier. It also raised some important social issues as well, without being too preachy.
niutta-enrico This film has a lot of realism and is really well acted. Black girl and black community (so loud, so big) compared with white ones (so small, so unsteady) were the most interesting things to me, living so far from Illinois. But besides that I appreciated many details and even though I can't say that I enjoyed the film, Authors' talent is out of discussion.The story, however, was not catching and sometimes the two girls reminded me of two blind lemmings working their way through life, love and maternity. Simple things made complicated are not entertaining. And one thing lacks more than any other: fun. Real people make jokes, real people laugh: Sam and Jasmine? At best they smile...
kwhitehead-34671 To be honest i went straight past this movie as looking a bit "boring" (and yes im a woman) But hubby decided to pick it. I'm glad he did now in hindsight.It gives a really touching account, if thats the right word to use, perspective from the eyes of different people and different circumstances in life and how they rationalize and reason. Maybe it was prettied over in parts but that was at the director/producers doing. I think its main objective is not to be deeply depressing or harsh on matters that have been done often, this sits middle of the road as to not offend people on either side of judgements and for that i commend it. I can not stand movies that are so far off base because of the film makers motives or opinions. It's a talent to stay neutral and do it well for character and plot development.This is a movie you might only watch once but i think anyone could learn or take something away from it about people and life in general.
Steve Pulaski Unexpected is precisely the kind of film one well-acquainted with the mumblecore subgenre in film would expect Kris Swanberg, the wife of director/writer/producer/actor/do-it-all-man Joe Swanberg would make, and that's by no means a bad thing. Her husband has made a career making no-budget films revolving around millennials grappling with happiness, personal enrichment, existential dread, technology, sexual angst, sexual tension, and relationships, and here, in her third feature, following two decidedly smaller efforts, Unexpected tackles a story of two people going through the same tribulation/blessing and finding themselves seeing different experiences.We focus on Samantha Abbott (Cobie Smulders), a young teacher at an underfunded public school in Chicago that will see its doors close following this school year. Samantha, being one of the only white teachers in the largely urban school, does something few of her peers seem to do, which is encourage her students to apply for college, even going as far as to sit with them individually while they apply and work out possible financial aid opportunities. One day, however, Samantha discovers she is pregnant with her boyfriend John (Anders Holm). Samantha doesn't know how this will effect her future, especially when she has John declaring she can take a year or two off of work to raise the kid while he'll float the family with his income.However, this idea doesn't sit well with Samantha largely because she doesn't want to be a mother and have everything else come second. Yet, despite this, Samantha impulsively marries John, holding a brief service with no family, much to the dismay of her mother (Elizabeth McGovern), who feels she's going about this pregnancy in a backhanded way. Even though Samantha and John seem to be at opposing ends throughout this whole process, Samantha finds comfortable empathy and friendship in Jasmine (Gail Bean), one of her students, a high school senior, who is also pregnant by her current boyfriend. Jasmine lives with her grandmother, and while she does want to go to college, the lofty pricetag that comes with and the potential of not being there for her child are budding factors that always cross her mind.Unexpected deals with how the same sort of circumstance can provide for different experiences depending on a variety of factors. Both Jasmine and Samantha aren't wholly far in age (she's about eighteen, she's maybe in her early-thirties), but their racial divide is clearly present, especially when considering colleges to apply to and having to work around Jasmine's tumultuous homelife in order to make college a reality. If nothing else, Swanberg effectively shows us the idea that every kid should go to college isn't a bad idea, in theory, but in practice, without taking into account different financial and stability situations, is a very messy ordeal.Swanberg keeps the pregnancy jokes down to a minimum, pleasantly so; only one scene involving Cheetos and pickle-juice will evoke some form of nauseousness, while the remainder of the film is helmed by strong conversations between Samantha and Jasmine, or Samantha and John, as we see one relationship brew and a marriage that should've never been slowly divulge into arguments. This is also, somewhat unsurprisingly so, a story of trying to find your personal identity amidst a change that will potentially make your life come second to the life of a child. The recurring theme in many of these newer independent films is trying to find some comfort in one's self, and Unexpected shows that by having Samantha's boyfriend trying to dictate what she will do and how she will live her life following a baby. She doesn't want the next ten years already laid out before her and she definitely doesn't want them meticulously mapped out by someone who isn't her.At Unexpected's core are its performances and dialog, and Smulders proves that's she's more than a background character in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., in addition to Bean, who has serious acting talent, with an ability to be emotional without being too obvious in her feelings. This is a film that really shows how something widely regarded as a blessing can be a setback or a difficult thing to manage, in addition to being a circumstance that prompts many different experiences depending on you, your social class, and your race. It's a uniformly solid film about very few people have probably seen taken with such a reserved tenderness despite being such a hot topic of discussion.Starring: Cobie Smulders, Gail Bean, Anders Holm, and Elizabeth McGovern. Directed by: Kris Swanberg.