If you watch Lifetime movies of the week you know they tend to be overwrought, supposedly true life melodramas with a cookie cutter story.
The script and acting are no great shakes.
A Deadly Adoption could had gone for the parody route like Scary Movie, Austin Powers or Naked Gun films. Instead they have de-constructed the typical Lifetime film and made a better version of it.
The film has the usual tropes and clichés with just a hint of a knowing wink here and there. As one character states:'I found an unopened box of chocolate today. You know the dangers of diabetic ketoacidosis.'
The biggest difference is that this television movie of the week has two A list cinema stars. Will Ferrell plays a financial management guru with a string of successful books.
Kristen Wiig is his wife who sells organic food in market stalls in their small town. They have a five year old daughter Sully to whom they are overprotective towards especially as she is diabetic.
Right at the beginning we see Wiig falls over from a dilapidated boat dock into the river which results in a miscarriage. Some years later as the story progresses they meet Jessica Lowndes who is homeless and giving her baby up for adoption however she is not all sweet and innocent and her path has crossed with Ferrell before.
Ferrell and Wiig play it straight. Ferrell also has what looks like a fake beard and recites the corny lines likes it is Shakespeare. You get a hint that he might be sexually attracted to Lowndes as he looks down her cleavage and Lowndes has a hoot playing the femme fatale role.
Yet it is surprisingly zippy, it moves along at a fast pace, it has a fair amount of cheesiness, bad stunts and ludicrous plot developments.
In a sense Ferrell and Wiig just made a better Lifetime movie than Lifetime normally manage to do. Still there is only so much you can when you try to polish a turd.
