Before Saturday night, the only original Lifetime movie I had ever watched was Untouchable: The Drew Peterson Story. It was awful, but kind of amazing, and featured an unforgettable performance by Rob Lowe as Peterson. I thought my Lifetime movie viewing days were over until I read about A Deadly Adoption starring Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig. Yes, that Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig.
A Deadly Adoption centers on Robert and Sarah Benson (Ferrell and Wiig), and their desire to have a second child after a pregnant Sarah has an accident, loses the baby, and finds herself unable to have children. They turn to an adoption agency, which finds Bridget (Jessica Lowndes) — who is six months pregnant, but also living in a shelter. Not wanting their unborn child to stay in a shelter, the Bensons ask Bridget to move in, and — because this is Lifetime — it leads to murder, betrayal, organic food, shocking revelations, and the need for insulin.
https://youtu.be/921UzgGkcVw
With a script by long-time Ferrell collaborator Andrew Steele, many assumed that viewers would be in store for something similar to the miniseries parody The Spoils of Babylon, or the Spanish language movie Casa de mi Padre. Instead, they watched a straightforward attempt at making a Lifetime movie, and that might be A Deadly Adoption’s best joke. If you replaced Ferrell and Wiig with Dean Cain and Jennie Garth, this would have just been a regular Lifetime movie premiere. That’s how great A Deadly Adoption is as a Lifetime movie.
Director Rachel Lee Goldenberg is possibly the reason the movie toes the line between parody and legitimate Lifetime fare so deftly. While Goldenberg has been working on shorts with Funny or Die — Ferrell’s online comedy site co-founded with director Adam McKay — for years, she actually got her start in Hollywood with a movie studio called The Asylum.
The Asylum is now known as the studio that unleashed the Sharknado trilogy on the world, but before that Goldenberg directed low-budget, direct-to-video movies intended to cash in on Hollywood blockbusters like Sherlock Holmes, Snow White and the Huntsman, and High School Musical. She understands how to make create a movie that may not win any awards, but will entertain its audience for a couple hours.
Obviously, Goldenberg and Steele are not the reason people tuned in to Lifetime on a Saturday night. That would be two of Hollywood’s best comedic actors in Ferrell and Wiig starring in a Lifetime movie. So why did Ferrell and Wiig seemingly schlump down to this level?
If you believe the press releases for A Deadly Adoption, Ferrell is a “big fan of the genre,” but the real reason is that it is a joke. Ferrell and Wiig are apparently so comfortable as comedians that they will do just about anything for a laugh, whether it’s making fools of themselves at the Golden Globes, pretending to know anything about Michael Jordan on Jimmy Fallon, starring in Old Milwaukee beer commercials that only air in small Midwestern cities, or making an actual Lifetime movie worthy of Melissa Gilbert.
A Deadly Adoption is going to leave some fans of Ferrell and Wiig unhappy, but it wasn’t made for fans of Anchorman or Bridesmaids in mind. It’s a long, drawn out April Fool’s joke with both Lifetime and the creators of A Deadly Adoption in on the gag, and whether you were hoping for a parody of — or a companion piece to — Crimes of Passion: She Woke Up Pregnant, the joke was on you, and it was a pretty good one.
