Title:
The Babymakers
Year:
2012
Genre:
Adventure, Comedy
Director:
Jay Chandrasekhar
Writer:
Peter Gaulke, Gerry Swallow
Runtime:
95min
Cast:
Paul Schneider, Olivia Munn, Michael Yurchak, Wood Harris, Kevin Heffernan, Nat
Faxon, Jay Chandrasekhar
Produc.: Duck Attack Films, Alliance Films, Automatik Entertainment, IM Global
First
scene. Tommy and Audrey sleep in their bedroom with the door open, when they
hear the baby mourn. Audrey, still half asleep, tells Tommy that it is his
turn, and he, not in better conditions, gets up, closes it and returns to bed.
The neighbor´s baby is again only, the neighbors problem.
Tommy
returns to his resting, and meanwhile, Audrey remains anxious and thoughtful.
Second scene. They are both in a restaurant, where they have gone to celebrate their
three years together. For Audrey, tonight is doubly significant. Smiling, she
expresses her husband that she is ready for the next step. Tommy agrees, but
then we find out that they do not speak about the same thing. She refers to
motherhood, and he, to try new alternatives in bed.
With
this introduction, two things are accomplish. It reveals, creatively, of the
emptiness that Audrey is feeling, at the lack of kids. To then, trample the
good work, with an out of place Tommy and very unromantic. It makes us wonder,
how someone would choose an evening like that, to talk about something so
intimate, with so little delidacy.
Not long ago, I had the opportunity to watch Maybe
Baby (2000). A british film that touched exactly the same issue. In it
abounded a sober humor that, although composed by spicy jokes, always tried to
prioritize the concerns of Sam (Joely Richardson) and Lucy Bell (Hugh Laurie),
the main characters. One could laugh, but never forgot that they suffered.
Unfortunately,
Jay Chandrasekhar takes the wrong way, him yes, forgetting of the real problems
of Tommy and Audrey. Have they evolved properly, they would have been crucial
for constructing a good movie. On the contrary, the director chooses the silliness,
creating improbable situations, that only help one to go losing interest, with
the passage of the minutes.
At
first, both films start from the need of medical examinations, and which give
identical results: Lucy and Audrey are in perfect conditions, while Sam and
Tommy are those who are failing. The british director keeps us clinging to the
marital conflict, while his american counterpart prefers to be funny.
Without
going into excesive details, we discover that today´s Tommy is not,
reproductively speaking, the same as before. That one, still single and who
would become a sperm donor, to get some money and pay for an engagement ring. At
the same time, those pre marital donations had been from the good ones, and
Tommy now, wants them back. From the moment that he locates the last
beneficiary couple, is that the film is no longer, properly counted.
Tommy
meets the lucky ones. Two homosexuals, too happy with their purchase as to
give him a refund. One of them, however, ends up being more flexible, but in
exchange that Tommy makes him happy. By
the way, his partner does not have to know.
A
joke like this might even be passable, if anything Tommy had said no from the
beginning. As instead he consults it with his best friend Wade (Kevin
Heffernan), it stops being funny and becomes stupid.
By
the end, what abounds more that nothing is the silliness, with Tommy and his unintelligent
comrades, Wade and Zigzag (Nat Faxon), planning a robbery at a sperm bank. For
that, they engage contact with Ron Jon, an Indian mobster, played by the
director himself, and whose contribution in front of the cameras, perhaps for the better,
could have been avoided.
If
anyone remained unconvinced about whether it's worth to see it, just to say that
during the robbery, Wade slips in semen, in a scene that is a mess, I believe,
should be enough to know the answer.
My rating: 3/10
