A Deadly Adoption (2015)

Truly the worst movie I've ever seen in a theater

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

A Major Disappointment

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

...then you'll probably find this film funny. I don't. It's a parody, after all, and Ferrell makes the mistake of playing it too straight, apparently believing that being good at being a bad actor will make it funny. It doesn't. It just makes it tedious. Kristen Wiig fares somewhat better, but her performance depends a lot on Ferrell, so she is limited in that respect. The child actress is cute but mumbles her lines, so we rarely know what she says. Sometimes that matters, mostly it doesn't. Some of the supporting players understand the assignment better that the principals. Brian Safi and Carolyn Hennesey know how to play it straight for humor, but they need someone to play off of. Jessica Lowndes, playing the villain of the piece, has the easiest assignment. All she has to do is be evil, exactly as she would in an otherwise straightforward version. Doing exactly that with Jake Weary as her scruffy boyfriend, she handles it well. To do a parody successfully, the creators must have respect for the original. In this case, it is unclear whether they do or don't.

"I really think another baby will bring the old Robert back." Robert (Ferrell) and Sarah (Wiig) are happily married and expecting a new baby. When Sarah has an accident and they lose the baby their lives are changed. Years later Sarah thinks that if they can adopt Robert will return to his old self. They find a pregnant mother who is willing to give them their baby and allow her to move in with them. This is when the obsession is revealed. First of all if you don't already know this is a spoof of a Lifetime movie. This is not a Scary Movie over the top spoof but it does poke fun at the Lifetime movie genre. Ferrell and Wiig play this straight and that is what makes this work. The script and the acting are purposely horrible and just about every cliché is in this. The movie is predictable, but what Lifetime movie isn't. I will admit this wasn't as funny as I was hoping, but what it is is a perfectly done send up of this genre and for that reason this is worth watching. Overall, a serious spoof of an extremely melodramatic genre. I enjoyed it. I give it a B-.

This was a parody, plain and simple, where the comedic actors played their roles as dead-pan seriously as they could, in order to keep you off-guard as long as possible. It pokes fun at Lifetime movies: the moronic plots, the stereotypical characters, and the predictably happy endings (the painfully long happy dancing at the end subtly asks the audience, "did you catch the joke?") How many times had you asked yourself, "WTF?" An author's book signing tour becomes a debaucherous drunken spree, where he scores as much tail as a rock star? (WTF?) And he doesn't remember the hot girl until it's too late? (WTF?) He gets shot twice and, after a large volume of blood gushes from his arm, goes out to confront the girl without bandaging his wounds ? (WTF?) The boyfriend gets shot in the gut, and gets up to scream at the police? (WTF?) The hero motorboats to the bridge and stands in the road, moments before the villain arrives in the pickup ? (WTF?) The escape plan was to have your daughter jump off the bridge, then you jump off after her ? (WTF?) Other reviewers caught most of the funny moments that I recall, like the slow-motion heroic garage door opening scene, the intense look of concern and determination on the slow-motorboating Ferrel's face, the psycho's high heels following her off the bridge as she plunged to her death from her fatal shoulder wound... I came in late in the movie, where the family was eating breakfast, but by the time the scene with Ferrel and the girl in his study took place, I knew from the dialog that the film was tongue-in-cheek: "IT must get HARD sometimes..." she says provocatively. "Yes, IT does get HARD," or words to that effect.

There's a reason I dislike Lifetime movies..The ONLY reason I even watched this movie was because Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig was in it. I'm sure that this is why MOST people even watched it. It wasn't even a decent lifetime type movie. I think the reason it was considered a comedy is because they made it pretty obvious how fake things were. Example - when Will Ferrell's character is shot and near death..minutes later, he's up, talking and carrying his wife! Anyways, I just wasted 2 hours of my life..and I can NEVER get it back. Good Grief! I'm not sure exactly why these two big hitter stars even decided to do this movie. Perhaps they were offered good money...or they were bored...or both. Who knows.. Terrible movie to say the least...