by Beth Szczepanski

Created on: July 13, 2008

The wacky things people do in order to reproduce these days can make for some pretty entertaining cinema. The most recent example is Baby Mama, which might not have been Oscar material but was at least funny. Miss Conception, on the other hand, tries too hard to be funny and falls flat on its fake British bum.

In this movie, Kate, played by Heather Graham, finds out she has only four days to conceive a child. This puts the whole thing on shaky ground as far as plot is concerned; I don't think I've ever heard of such a diagnosis. Anyway, Kate's boyfriend doesn't want to procreate, so she recruits her best friend Clem to help her find any fertile guy willing to inseminate her.

Pardon my prudishness, but the idea of a woman running around looking for a man, any man, to fertilize her last remaining egg seems, well, yucky. There are so many other options for the baby-desperate woman these days. Plenty of kids need adoptive homes, or she could have opted to have that last egg frozen and saved until she was ready to use it. With Kate's obviously neurotic character, I might suggest she look into getting a Chihuahua or something instead of a child, anyway.

Still, this could have been an entertaining premise for a movie if it had been done a little differently. If we'd really been pulling for the protagonist, it could have been a fun ride. In Miss Conception, I found myself completely uninterested in whether or not Kate succeeded in her plan. Graham is usually a pretty good actress, but between the fake British accent and some really dull writing, I couldn't get myself to relate to her.

A better script could have made this plot work. The storyline is ludicrous, so to play it as a straight romantic comedy was the wrong decision. Instead, they should have fully embraced the silliness made a wacky flick like Baby Mama. By taking this movie too seriously, the director made it entirely unfunny.

It seems like the director of this film is operating under the assumption that British accents equal romantic comedy gold. For just about any movie starring Hugh Grant, that is usually the case. They might not be stellar, but they do all right at the box office. This attempt to cash in on the British effect doesn't work, though. The main problem is that the movie is more icky than romantic, and more dull than comedic. It's no wonder this one is being released in only a few cities (aren't we lucky!), and I don't doubt that it will turn up on some second-rate cable network soon.

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