Sunday, June 21, 2015

Movie Review: "A Deadly Adoption" (2015)

Image Source
Movie"A Deadly Adoption"
Director: Rachel Goldenberg
Year: 2015
Rating: UR (TV-14)
Running Time: 2 hours, 2 minutes (with commercials)

Five years after a tragic accident that led to losing their unborn child, Robert (Will Ferrell) and Sarah Benson (Kristen Wiig) are looking to adopt. Through the adoption agency, they meet a pregnant woman named Bridgette (Jessica Lowndes) in the hopes of adopting her baby when its born. When they hear she is down on her luck, they invite her into their home for the last few months of her pregnancy to help her out. But not everything is as it seems as a sinister plot unfolds.

Shout-out to the one troll on Facebook with no idea what the definition of "satire" is, who said that the people who finished this movie the entire way through were "stupid, tasteless losers." A+ for effort, thanks for playing!

BigJ and I really like both Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig. When we heard about this secret project, many questions were raised: will this be a comedy? Will it be a serious film? What will it be about? Why? Who was the idiot/genius who decided to green-light this project? The internet was abuzz a couple of months ago when information about this made-for-television Lifetime movie was announced via a leaked press release and was almost immediately "scrapped." We see how that turned out. Our best guess? It was all for publicity. And boy, did they get it. It was the #1 trending topic on Facebook news the night it aired for several hours and sure garnered a lot of criticism and questions: was this a comedy? Was it a serious film? What was it really about? Why? Who was the idiot/genius who decided to green-light this project?

There is an old saying that there are two types of people in this world: those who get Monty Python, and those who don't. This same statement can be applied to "A Deadly Adoption," believe it or not. There will be/have already been a lot of people who get it and there will be/have already been a lot of people who don't get it. For those that don't get it, please, please understand that this film is a comedy. It's not the type of comedy that does outrageous things like make an endless amount of dick and fart jokes, or continuously throw in prat falls for the hell of it, or use absurd prop comedy to get laughs. There is nobody out there, not one person, waving a giant flag saying, "hey, this is a comedy!!~!" This film is all about subtlety. Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig already know Lifetime movies are absurd without even trying and are already unintentionally funny, so why exaggerate it too much? The magic is in the nuanced.

Here's a current example for you. It's like Donald Trump's presidential campaign announcement: any comedian in the world could simply read his speech back with a straight face and it would be unintentionally hilarious because the source is already so ridiculous. This is basically what "A Deadly Adoption" is doing. Everyone involved in this movie has collected and expertly used every Lifetime movie cliché and wrapped it into one story, from ridiculous dialogue and epic, sinister music to ominous foreshadowing. Then, they play it completely straight and we can't help but laugh at its majesty. Like we said, its allure is in its subtlety. The slightly off sync looped audio, the dramatic fall into a lake which causes a massive tragedy, the alcoholism, the shattered family picture frame with shards of glass only on Sarah's face, the tearing of the magazine with Sarah's photo on it, the little girl with diabetes, the seductive house guest, hell, even the fact that Robert is a successful writer and Sarah owns a small organic farming business...these and so many more things are all Lifetime movie clichés! The acting is perfectly bad in that the characters lack depth and are played in a dry, almost wooden manner, but once again, this is intentional as it's another dramatic Lifetime movie cliché.

So, Wiig and Ferrell are very good at pretending to be bad actors. Don't underestimate what they have managed to pull off here. It is very difficult to intentionally make a drama so bad that it's hilarious. This been done by accident with films like "The Room," but to do it intentionally is quite hard. On top of this, to fool half of the viewing public into thinking it was a legit drama? That's a practical joke that would make Andy Kaufman proud.

My Rating: 8/10
BigJ's Rating: 8/10
IMDB's Rating: 5.7/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: ---%
Do we recommend this movie:  Yes!

2 comments:

  1. YESSSSS!!!! Reading this review has me excited to watch this beast! Thank you Lolo and Big J!!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's really a good time if you can take it with a grain of salt! I am interested to see how you feel about it!

      Delete