A Deadly Adoption

This is typical Lifetime fodder, neither good nor bad; pretty much middle of the pack. Nothing unique about this. Yes, when you watch Ferrell, you expect him to do something "over the top" to legitimize it as a spoof but that doesn't happen. It's not great or even good drama. It is mediocre. I know of what I speak because I have seen a lot of the Lifetime original movies.

Stating that, it can't be stated as satire. It is far too subtle to be considered satire. It can have a life of it's own as bad Lifetime but it's not really bad enough.

I don't know why Ferrell and Wiig did this movie.

I will say, however, that Lifetime, had a coup with this because it is has created a stir in social media and that may have been the outcome desired all along.

If you watch Lifetime movies of the week you know they tend to be overwrought, supposedly true life melodramas with a cookie cutter story.

The script and acting are no great shakes.

A Deadly Adoption could had gone for the parody route like Scary Movie, Austin Powers or Naked Gun films. Instead they have de-constructed the typical Lifetime film and made a better version of it.

The film has the usual tropes and clichés with just a hint of a knowing wink here and there. As one character states:'I found an unopened box of chocolate today. You know the dangers of diabetic ketoacidosis.'

The biggest difference is that this television movie of the week has two A list cinema stars. Will Ferrell plays a financial management guru with a string of successful books.

Kristen Wiig is his wife who sells organic food in market stalls in their small town. They have a five year old daughter Sully to whom they are overprotective towards especially as she is diabetic.

Right at the beginning we see Wiig falls over from a dilapidated boat dock into the river which results in a miscarriage. Some years later as the story progresses they meet Jessica Lowndes who is homeless and giving her baby up for adoption however she is not all sweet and innocent and her path has crossed with Ferrell before.

Ferrell and Wiig play it straight. Ferrell also has what looks like a fake beard and recites the corny lines likes it is Shakespeare. You get a hint that he might be sexually attracted to Lowndes as he looks down her cleavage and Lowndes has a hoot playing the femme fatale role.

Yet it is surprisingly zippy, it moves along at a fast pace, it has a fair amount of cheesiness, bad stunts and ludicrous plot developments.

Still there is only so much you can do when you try to polish a turd.

Robert Benson (Will Ferrell) is a best selling author and financial guru. His wife Sarah (Kristen Wiig) suffers a miscarriage after a dock accident. Five years later, Robert is a recluse and a recovering alcoholic. Sarah is an organic food vendor. He's overprotective of their diabetic daughter Sully (Alyvia Alyn Lind). They're looking to adopt and they meet expecting mother Bridgette Gibson (Jessica Lowndes). They invite Bridgette to stay with them rather than going back to the women's shelter. The problem is that something ominous about Bridgette.

Is it a spoof? Yes, sort of. This is a fascinating odd little Lifetime TV movie. These are great comedians playing it somewhat straight. Yet the dialogue is read with a (pardon the pun) pregnant pause. They are acting sincere but they seem to be doing it with a nudge and a wink. It is serious but it is not at all serious. It opens with a ridiculous dock accident. There's no way this is being treated as a serious drama. Just look at Will Ferrell's hair. That's insanely wrong. But nobody is playing this for easy Wayans brothers' parody laughs. I laugh when Sarah and Bridgette fight but they are not doing a fake comedic fight. This is a fun weird movie.

OK. I sort of get it. Lifetime wanted to make fun of itself by doing a very typical Lifetime movie starring two comedic kingpins, but play it deadpan so that nobody will actually know what's what. The result? Nobody really knows what's what. Although there are a few moments that seem to be a parody of a Lifetime movie, mostly it is just played straight and the result is just a really poorly written plot orchestrated by two very talented actors. If only it would have decided which it wanted to be: a comedy or a serious drama. But it lingers somewhere in between so that at the end, it's really just another Lifetime movie, and if you don't get the jokes, a very poor one at that.

Now here is something you don't see everyday, or at least in a long while: a deadpan, totally serious, almost (sometimes) dramatic take on Lifetime movies-of-the-week on Lifetime. If what my wife tells me is correct, A Deadly Adoption actually has practically the same plot as another Lifetime movie not too long ago - a pregnant woman with nefarious intentions gets her way between a husband, wife and their child and wreaks havoc while seemingly about an adoption scenario. This is, I'm sure, intentional on the parts of executive producers Will Ferrell and Adam McKay; they not too long ago made Casa de mi Padre, a stone-faced take-off on Spanish tela-novellas with Ferrell playing Mexican full-tilt, and Wiig herself was in a series on IFC, The Spoils of Babylon, which was also a take on soaps (the writer of this film, Andrew Steele, was one of the writers for Babylon).

But what a strange, entertaining beast this is. At first I wasn't sure what to make of it - is this really trying to be *serious*? How much of this is supposed to be a joke or a comedy? One may go into A Deadly Adoption with Ferrell and Wiig at the top of the cast and wonder what's up, if this is going to lampoon Lifetime movies. I should say it does, but not as much as I thought it would, or rather it's in small doses. There are lines and scenarios that are very funny, such as referring to the main couple's daughter's condition: "You know the dangers of diabetic ketoacidosis!" Or the fact that Ferrell's character, Robert Benson (like Bob Benson from Mad Men, I wonder, maybe just a coincidence), is now a reformed alcoholic who used to go on benders during his book tours... for books on financial advice.

And to be sure, at first, seeing Ferrell and Wiig delivering such earnest dialog, and just how they look is funny (Ferrell with a beard that could have easily been pasted on). But all of the other actors are the people who you would usually see in a Lifetime movie, and the director, Rachel Goldenberg, is not a Hollywood pro exactly. She has a wild mix of credits, from Asylum movies (Sherlock Holmes, to tie in with the 2009 movie) to actual TV movies of this ilk (Escape from Polygamy) and more recent comedy work. Steele has more of a foot in comedy, as a writer and collaborator on SNL, though he, the director, and the actors do a remarkable thing: they completely commit to the scenario, the drama around this crazy 'new woman' who comes in to turn everything upside down and cause violence and kidnapping and affairs revealed and shocks galore. And I wouldn't want it any other way.

I thought about other made-for-TV cable movies that come out, like the Sharknado movies and the like on the SyFy channel, which probably have about the same self-awareness as A Deadly Adoption. But I never see the actors in those movies - many of them are all but winking at the camera as they go to collect their quick paychecks to get eaten by CGI sharknados or Megapythons or whatever. Ferrel, Wiig and company aren't out to make anything cheap or silly here (though maybe the last scene is goofy, perhaps just like a Lifetime movie). The funny thing is, because Ferrell and Wiig and co-star Jessica Lowdnes play everything completely straight - and Ferrell and Wiig are better actors than a Lifetime movie should ever deserve - and it's all believable, sometimes verging on maybe, kinda, sorta being dramatic in a *good* way... until one realizes what they're saying, more often than not, is absurd, as are the situations they get themselves in.

The tropes are all recognizable if one is into Lifetime movies, and that's also the idea, from the happy white family and the "bad" girl that comes in to make things chaotic. It's not something that can be easily parsed into 'Oh, it's just a parody' or 'Oh, it's actually just another Lifetime movie with these actors'. I found myself laughing many times during A Deadly Adoption, if not during every scene. It's a wholly clever, successful experiment in poker-faced absurdism.