Great Film overall

Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

...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'm not sure what this a was trying to be, I think like most people with Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig attached I went into this expecting a parody of Lifetime movies. The problem is the parody is missing so all this is, is a Lifetime movie.Yes every cliché is used and emphasized just a little bit more (slow motion tragedy scenes, overbearing mood music, bright happy outdoor scenes, the gay best friend etc) and I did laugh a couple of times (Robert's little indiscretion while drunk off his ass during his book tour, "based on a true story" tagged on at the end) but this is not funny ha, ha like you'd be expecting. Wiig and Ferrell play it straight up until and for the most part including the final super HEA musical scene.I guess really the only parody thing this has going for it is how predictable it is; story, music situations. Lifetime movies are all a degree of bad so for this to work it had to be super bad or at least OTT, as it was it was just average. I'm left wondering what was the point? Ferrell plays Robert Benson a successful (bearded) author, wearer of bad khaki pants and husband to Sarah of organic food fame, Together they have a daughter 'Sully' and are expecting another when tragedy strikes (in slow motion) and Sarah loses the baby. 5 years later Robert is getting over a drinking binge and is overprotective of his precocious diabetic daughter. They are hoping to adopt when their agency introduces them to Bridgette, a beautiful and mysterious pregnant woman who the Bensons soon take into their home. All is not as it seems though and their dreams of adopting her unborn child soon go awry. 7/27/15

I don't know what to make of this movie. It's got A list movie stars like Will Ferrell and Kristin Wiig in a lifetime thriller. As it unfolds it becomes more like a spoof of a lifetime thriller. An evil woman scams a couple into thinking she's giving up her baby for them to adopt.Will Ferrell rising from being shot and going after the bad guys is just laugh out loud. The beautiful Jessica Lowndes is a good villain. And the way they were so happy even though their friends were killed and dancing around at the end is just ludicrous.Watch it for the stars but be warned it's weird.

A deadly adoption is a Drama with some Mystery/Thriller elements thrown in there, and stars Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig in roles that you would not be used to seeing them in. And i would have to say they did a pretty good job in these serious roles, Will Ferrell especially i thought for the most part got me to see him as a serious character rather than the funny guy, so i wouldn't mind seeing him do more of this. The main thing this movie suffers most from is it didn't know what it was most of the time, there were times where it is like a soap opera then switches to a mystery, then a thriller, and then i don't even know what that ending was, it was just a mess. Like, the first 20 - 30 minutes is dreadfully unwatchable, all the dialogue is cliché and fake, and it all just seemed very dull and boring. The character interactions were all odd and in terms of the plot, a lot of that first 30 minutes was completely pointless, well, i thought the whole movie was pretty pointless. After that you start to get a little bit of mystery and before you know it the tone flips again and you are almost watching a completely different movie. I have to say though, during the middle portion where things start to get a little odd and you can sense something is up, the interactions between Will Ferrell's character and Jessica Lowndes' character were pretty entertaining and made we wonder what was going on. But at the same time it was very predictable early on, what was coming up next was predictable but the reasons behind some actions weren't clear until later. And even then it was just confusing and the more i think about it the more confused i get. This was just a very weird movie, i'm not sure what the director was trying to show but it looked like they just got it all wrong. Apart from some good convincing acting from Ferrell and Wiig, and some intriguing mystery themes in the second act, the whole film was a complete mess and it made it hard to stay interested for long periods of time. - 4.7