The Donor Party is the kind of movie that keeps getting made, yet I’m not sure if it ever says something new. Hold on for a moment, as this was where I go on more of a tangent than review. Anyways, when I was an elementary school aged kid…movies such as Baby Boom, Crossing Delancey and Look Who’s Talking was popular. Hell, I’ll go out on a limb and toss in Twins. Why? Well, because people liked the idea that science finally gave the ability to plan their lives to the grossest degree.
It’s like a Chicken Pox Party for Impregnation
Malin Akerman plays Jaclyn. She’s an aging lady not unlike most you know, but she has a wacky idea. Online dating and life’s various maladies keep getting in her way. Now, she wants her friends to help her formulate a plan to get pregnant at a very special party. That’s when the 93 minute runtime of The Donor Party starts feeling like a Ken Burns documentary.
![The Donor Party (2023) [Movie review] 1](https://andersonvision.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/TheDonorParty_AppleTrailers_Poster_2764x40962-scaled.webp "The Donor Party (2023) [Movie review] 2")
We’ve seen this film before
Many of the more timid viewers will find issue with Akerman’s character and her friends drugging and setting up three men to be her sperm donors. What I don’t buy is the semi-glaze sexual fantasy setup that never goes to any real point. It’s a fantasy as much as it’s a sitcom contrivance designed to show how hard it is to get knocked up.
After 90 minutes of The Donor Party, I was left stumped
The Donor Party is one of those movies that probably felt a lot more clever in script form than it did filmed. That doesn’t make it a bad movie, as history is full of movies like this. It just makes it pretty flat and unnoticeable. Sometimes, those are the harder movies to watch. But, they also seem to make up the vast majority of movies that seemed to fill those youthful memories of Premium Cable binging.
After all, there is no reason that I’ve seen Solarbabies 60 times, but I have. While I’m quite familiar with the cast and have enjoyed them in other things, there’s nothing in The Donor Party that stands out. If it was made for TV, it would be a pilot season casualty. But, as a feature film…it’s a harmless trifle.
So, why do movies like this exist?
The Donor Party exists for the same reason as any other romantic comedy programmer existed from the Post World War II era to now. Because there is always an audience for light comedies about adults doing goofy things with each other. Now, that seems to involve pregnancy pacts that were once the fodder for Lifetime Original Movies.
But, it’s funny now. Right?
