Unexpected

Career-minded inner-city Chicago high school teacher Sam (Cobie Smulders) one day finds herself pregnant and she freaks out, caught in a state somewhere between depression and elation. While she wants to have a baby, she's still not married to her live-in sensitive hipster boyfriend (Anders Holn). To assuage their guilt, the two white middle-class millennials stage a shotgun marriage, which proves distasteful to Sam's old-fashioned prude of a mother (Elizabeth McGovern). Around the same time, Sam discovers that her star pupil, Jasmine (Gail Bean), is also pregnant. Both are in similar predicaments: Sam is torn between her desire to raise her daughter properly or to carry on with her career, while Jasmine has to choose between her baby and getting a college education. Sam feels she must take a traditional “savior” role and preach endlessly to Jasmine about the importance of a college education, but Sam must eventually face the truth that she might not have Jasmine's best interests at heart. While director Kris Swanberg takes very few risks here—mostly settling for bottom-of-the-barrel sentimentality—Unexpected does have its moments. A strong optional purchase. (M. Sandlin)