“The Babymakers” tries to mix sweet romance with juvenile humor

Jay Chandrasekhar is quick to point out that the latest film that he has directed and co-stars with Kevin Heffernan in, The Babymakers, is NOT a Broken Lizard movie.

Those films, both he and Heffernan said, rely on plots that revolve around teams or squads that can include all five members — from police officers (Super Troopers) to beer-drinking teams (Beerfest). The Babymakers, they claim, is more akin to what Monty Python’s John Cleese and Michael Palin did with A Fish Called Wanda.

Except comparing those two movies is like comparing a romantic-comedy caper with a movie that tries to be sappy while using phrases such as “cum diamond.”

“I think it’s safe to say it’s the only sperm bank heist film,” Chandrasekhar said before a screening earlier this week at The Friars Club in New York City.

His film stars Paul Schneider and Olivia Munn as Tommy and Audrey Macklin, a married couple that’s ready to start having kids — except it turns out that Tommy’s sperm count isn’t what it once was. When Tommy remembers he had donated sperm several years earlier, and that there’s only one good sample remaining, he and his friends (played by Heffernan and Nat Faxon, with Chandrasekhar playing an Indian criminal mastermind) decide to break into the sperm bank to retrieve it. It’s two sharply contrasting films in one. At times, it wants to be a sweet romantic comedy. At others, a gross-out juvenile celebration of dick jokes, vagina jokes, anal sex jokes, and naturally, lots and lots of masturbation and/or sperm jokes. It heightens the ante of There’s Something About Mary with slippery slapstick that’ll make you wince. And there are separate montages — one sweet, in which everyone in town, it seems, has advice for Tommy about his sperm count; the other, not-so sweet as Tommy is hit in the balls over and over again.

Aisha Tyler is underutilized as one of Munn’s friends, while Hayes MacArthur makes the most of his brief onscreen time as a guy who makes Schneider’s character an offer he might just have to refuse.

Your maturity level and your tolerance for the lowest of low-brow jokes juxtaposed with sappy romance will determine whether you watch, and then enjoy, The Babymakers.

Here is the friendlier trailer for this R-rated film:

If you’re on the fence about whether to see the movie, then perhaps this Q&A with Chandrasekhar, Heffernan and Schneider from the Friars Club will help sway you one way or the other. In this clip, they talk about the true story that inspired the script, the process in which they sold it to Warner Bros., only to buy it back and make it with Millennium Entertainment, and then making the movie. Roll it.

The Babymakers is out today in cinemas in 10 markets, and also available On Demand or via iTunes. Chandrasekhar and Heffernan will host a Q&A and sign posters at the Aug. 7, 2012, screening in NYC at the AMC Loews Village 7.

The Babymakers on iTunes:

The Babymakers

Sean L. McCarthy

Editor and publisher since 2007, when he was named New York's Funniest Reporter. Former newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News, Boston Herald and smaller dailies and community papers across America. Loves comedy so much he founded this site.

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