Whatever that was, it wasn’t very funny. For the 25th anniversary of its made-for-TV movies, Lifetime let Will Ferrell, Kristen Wiig and Funny Or Die writer Andrew Steele were allowed to make their own Lifetime movie, an idea that sounds like a joke in itself. Unfortunately for anyone who stayed up for the whole movie last night, it was the only joke.
Despite ending with a card that claims it was “inspired by a true story,” the plot of A Deadly Adoption is about as unrealistic and outrageous as you would expect. Ferrell stars as Robert Benson, a successful writer of financial books. Wiig plays his wife, Sarah, who runs a successful natural food stand. On their daughter Sully’s birthday, Sarah takes a tumble off their dock and she loses her second pregnancy.
Five years later, Robert and Sarah think that adopting a baby might rejuvenate their lives and get Robert out of a funk. They agree to adopt the baby that Bridgette (Jessica Lowndes) is pregnant with. But soon, Bridgette’s ulterior motives become clear as she starts seducing Robert.
Now, if you were hoping that this would be a Young Frankenstein or Airplane!-style parody of Lifetime movies, don’t watch this because it’s not. For the majority of the film, it plays just like a traditional Lifetime movie, except one that happens to star two of the biggest comedy stars on the planet. Director Rachel Goldberg, whose past credits also include Funny Or Die shorts, perfectly replicates the look of a Lifetime movie, so at least someone did their job.
There’s plenty of “shocking” (or totally predictable to anyone with a brain) twists that make the second half much more fun. Steele starts playing fast and loose with our suspension of disbelief, especially when he reveals Bridgette’s true identity. He also throws in plenty of bizarre tid-bits that make it hard to keep a straight face.
For example, Sully (played by the impossibly lovely little girl Alyvia Alyn Lind) is diabetic just to make the last scenes more tense. Robert has a drinking problem since he partied too much as a successful writer (I wonder if Jim Kramer leads that kind of wild life). Sarah has a gay friend (Bryan Safi), who mysteriously seems to be the only one who can be mortally wounded by bullets. And Bridgette has a tattooed murderer for a boyfriend who oddly knows a lot about helping diabetes patients.
A Deadly Adoption doesn’t really get funny until the last 15 minutes, when Sarah and Robert finally get to confront Bridgette - on a bridge, with her holding their daughter hostage. At that moment, they suddenly realize that they’re making a parody. But maybe that’s the joke. Throughout the whole film, it feels like Ferrell and Wiig just found a random previously written Lifetime script and wanted to make it. They decided to play it seriously, which again, sounds like a funny idea. I just wish it wasn’t a joke that took two hours to tell.
screenshot from Lifetime YouTube video