Apparently, Georgina Salt's biological clock has been ticking a great deal faster than she ever could have imagined. For upon visiting a fertility clinic, the attractive young woman (Heather Graham) learns that she has only two weeks to go before her ovaries dry up, rendering her forever unable to have a baby. The problem is that her longtime boyfriend (Tom Ellis) has no desire to be a daddy, so Georgina is forced to look elsewhere for sperm-donor options. Her search leads her to employ all sorts of desperate measures, including advertising for a "lodger," picking off mourners at a funeral, hooking up with a muscle-bound exotic dancer, succumbing to the advances of a horny employee, pressuring her gay best friend to perform the service and, when all else fails, even turning to a semen-filled turkey baster to get the job done.
Directed by Eric Styles, "Miss Conception" is a modestly amusing little British comedy filled with pleasant moments and droll performances, though, frankly, nothing in it is quite as teasy or clever as its punny title. On a sociopolitical level, the movie squares things with the feminists in the audience by counterbalancing Georgina's obsession with having a baby with the fact that she runs her own construction company. The one-note premise does lead to some contrivance and repetitiousness in the plotting, but the performances and consistently upbeat tone offset some of the movie's weaknesses.
