Starring Jason Bateman and co-starting Jennifer Aniston, this film from 2010 is sold as a rom-com, but there honestly isn’t a single laugh in the film, nor even an attempt to get one really. No, this is a romantic drama. Jennifer Aniston plays Kassie Larson, an early-40s single woman in New York who decides she wants to have a baby and despite the protestations of her friend and repressed-admirer Wally Mars (Jason Bateman) opts to use a sperm donor. She throws an ‘insemination party’ to celebrate, where the donor provides his sample and the insemination takes place. If that wasn’t weird enough, Wally manages to spill the sample and decides to secretly provide a replacement.
Now, this film has all the hallmarks of an idea in a meeting which was green-lighted that has then proved difficult to pad-out to a feature film. It seems they lost interest and didn’t spend more than 5 minutes on the terrible poster and a few of the key scenes seem to be going to incredible lengths to make the conceit seem perfectly believable and normal, but it doesn’t work. Switching sperm samples without the woman knowing is disgustingly creepy and no amount of theatre can disguise that.
Wally is painted as such a feeble man that it takes him about 7 years to finish sentences, and he’s a upstaged by a child. He’s a very frustrating character to spend the vast majority of the screen time with.
Juliette Lewis and Jeff Goldblum supply the only light relief in an otherwise tedious, creepy trudge.
2 on 5
Info
Directors: Josh Gordon, Will Speck
Starring: Jason Bateman, Jennifer Aniston, Patrick Wilson, Juliette Lewis, Jeff Goldblum, Thomas Robinson UK Release: 1st September 2012
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