Cloves and Fedoras: Ty thinks "A Deadly Adoption" was deadly boring.
/Cloves and Fedoras is Seed Sings reviews for little known pieces of pop culture (or older pieces). Feel free to contact us with your own submissions of undiscovered gems that must be known.
I finally got around to watching the Lifetime movie "A Deadly Adoption" the other night.
You know the movie I am talking about, the made for Lifetime movie starring Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig. I had huge expectations for this. I thought it was going to be a work of comedic over acting and terribly written dialogue delivered from two pretty great actors.
Well, the dialogue was pretty terribly written and performed as such, but the jokes and Wiig and Ferrell being in on the absurdity of this was missing. This was a pretty straight forward, completely ridiculous Lifetime presentation. It was just like every other movie on that channel. It was melodramatic lunacy and Ferrell and Wiig were acting as if they weren't humongous stars. They acted as if this was a real job for them, like they really needed the work. There was little to no lunacy from the two of them and that was highly upsetting to me. The only humor I really got out of "A Deadly Adoption" was how seriously they tackled the issue of child diabetes. Wiig and Ferrell's daughter in the movie has diabetes and there were many mentions about not keeping real sugar in the house and how she desperately needed her insulin when she was held captive. The movie was insane from start to finish. It opened with a pregnant Wiig hanging out on a dock by a boat and she slips off the dock, can't swim and Ferrell rescues her, but they lose the baby. Fast forward five years and Ferrell is a very over protective father of their one child. He's also a very successful financial author. They take in a young pregnant girl because they want to adopt her baby so their daughter can have a brother. But, a little to on the nose, there's something a little off about this girl. She's clearly hitting on Ferrell's character and wants Wiig's character out of the picture. She also has a bad news boyfriend who is about as white trash as they come. It's eventually found out that the young lady isn't pregnant at all. I know, real shocker right? She and her boyfriend just want ransom money from Wiig and Ferrell since they've decided to kidnap their daughter. At least that's what the boyfriend wants. Turns out that after they lost their child in the accident five years ago, Ferrell's character hit the bottle pretty hard and met a groupie of his on the road and slept with her. You know that common story of a famous author having groupies and a crippling alcohol addiction. Ridiculous. Well that groupie turned out to be, wait for it, the young "pregnant" lady they let stay in their home. Needless to say, she just wants to be with Ferrell and his daughter and have a "normal" family. She tries to kill Wiig by knocking her unconscious and putting her in her car and turning the engine on and closing the garage door. Ferrell comes home after a night of searching for his daughter only to be met by the crazy girl(I can't remember any of the names of the characters because this movie was so stupid) and she shoots him twice in the arm, albeit by accident because she says she doesn't want to hurt him. She flees and Ferrell finds Wiig in the garage. He removes her from the car and gets her breathing again and he's back on the road to search for his daughter. Now, we see the crazy girl and the daughter speeding away in a pick up truck, all the while the little girl complaining that her stomach hurts and she needs her insulin. I say again, ridiculous. Ferrell finds them, confronts the crazy girl, pretends to let his daughter go with her, only to have them both jump in an idling boat under the bridge and before the crazy girl can get a shot off, Wiig plugs her in the back with a bullet. Another flash forward, this time only six months, and all is well. Ferrell has even calmed down on the over bearing parenting and the family breaks out into a dance. Then, end credits.
All I could think of was, WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED?! This made me feel like I was going crazy. It was so bizarre. I guess I expected something different, akin to James Franco's role on the soap opera he was on. I didn't expect Ferrell and Wiig to take it so seriously. Maybe it's just me, but I was looking for something way different and therein lies the problem. Don't expect anything good or promising from any programming Lifetime TV puts out there. You will be highly disappointed.
This was a real drag.
Ty
Ty is the Pop Culture editor for Seed Sing. He is an author but does not have groupies (yet). Follow him on twitter @tykulik.