Will Ferrell & Kristen Wiig Get Deadly Serious

From now until my dying day, I don't think I'll ever understand what compelled Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig to do a Lifetime movie. Lifetime celebrates its 25-year anniversary of making made for TV movies that basically scare us out of having kids, surfing the Internet, traveling abroad, or really doing anything at all. And in the midst of this celebration came Will Ferrell, charging onto the network to produce a quintessential Lifetime movie for the network. According to an Entertainment Weekly interview with A+E Networks senior VP of original movies Tanya Lopez and VP of original movies Arturo Interian, Ferrell was the one who "wanted to legitimately do a Lifetime sexual thriller" and basically "sneak it on" the network one night. Things of course got complicated when the news of the film broke. But nonetheless here it is, in all its serious glory. The film, cleverly entitled A Deadly Adoption, is a true to form Lifetime thriller and it may be the most serious film that both Wigg and Ferrell have ever done. In fact, it's Lifetime serious.

The two hilarious comedians have definitely had their share of more serious fare on the big screen. Will Ferrell was wonderful in the sweet but more somber comedies Stranger Than Fiction and Everything Must Go. And Kristen Wiig has really taken the indie drama game by storm with starring and supporting roles in comedy-dramas like The Skeleton Twins and serious dramas like All Good Things and the upcoming Nasty Baby. But even with a film like All Good Things, which is based on Robert Durst, nothing can match the overt drama of a Lifetime movie.

The film follows Ferrell and Wiig as married couple Robert and Sarah Benson who have been through some hard times when we first see them. Robert has held onto guilt and grief over the loss of their unborn child who died when Sarah fell off of a rotten dock into the lake by their home. He turned to drink, but is now sober and trying to get his writing career back on track. They have a daughter who has diabetes and Robert is overly protective of her to the point where its suffocating.

Since Sarah can't conceive another child, they try to adopt and meet a seemingly perfect pregnant woman whom they invite to stay with them until she gives birth. But that's when things go horribly awry. Not only is the woman, Bridget, not who she says she is, she also shares a sexy past with Robert that has driven her angry and insane. The film stays true to its channel in terms of the thrilling plot progression and twists we've come to expect from Lifetime. But suddenly at the end of the movie, the scene cuts to six months after the horrific incidents with Bridget and shows the family all dancing together in the kitchen. It's... Weird, to say the least. Considering how over-the-top dramatic the rest of the film was, to see the family then just do an awkward jig around a kitchen island was laughably eerie. It was the moment in the film most likely to be poking fun at the network and the types of films it makes.

It wouldn't be right to say that A Deadly Adoption is a great movie, but it is as ridiculously entertaining as you'd find any Lifetime original film. And if that really was Will Ferrell's point when taking on this endeavor, he has absolutely succeeded.

Images: Lifetime (2)