FILM REVIEWS

“The Babymakers” finds director Jay Chandrasekhar, a Broken Lizard alumnus, heading eagerly into “Hangover” territory.

This scrappy “men will be boys” movie is slightly more pleasant than its “Hangover” brethren but retains the proud raunchiness of those films.  Co-writers Peter Gaulke and Gerry Swallow try not so successfully to build character while strictly adhering to limiting genre rules.

Paul Schneider is an effective lead as Tommy, a regular Los Angeles dude who’s devoted to his wife of three years, Audrey (Oliver Munn, often looking uncomfortable with the material here). She’s ready to start a family, and their anniversary night begins a nine-month campaign of constant sex—anywhere and everywhere. Chandrasekhar captures this in one of the film’s clever montage sequences.

Nine months later, nothing’s happened. Audrey naturally starts to think it’s time for them to both get checked out, but Tommy bristles at the idea. On the outside, he’s confident that there’s nothing wrong with him. On the inside, he’s feeling like less than a man.

Tommy meanwhile suffers the indignity of all his friends, neighbors, and family members finding out that something’s amiss with the baby-making process and creepily piling all sorts of unreliable advice on him.

“The Babymakers” drags a bit as various complications ensue in Tommy’s attempts to provide a fresh sample to the fertility experts. When it does turn out that Tommy’s sperm is “confused,” the result of “testicular trauma” (cue another clever montage), it’s still hard for him to accept the cold facts.

A few years earlier, Tommy had secretly raised the money for Audrey’s engagement ring as an in-demand sperm donor. When Tommy reveals this to bolster his claim of healthy, hearty sperm, Audrey and her parents, rather bizarrely, become wildly upset. They’re enraged that Tommy potentially has many children already running around Los Angeles yet can’t deliver even one for his beloved. Audrey’s father strangely scolds Tommy for purchasing the ring with “beat-off money.”

Not too excited about adopting a Chinese baby—the compromise that Audrey comes up with—Tommy deperately tries to track down any remaining unused samples from his glory days, which ultimately leads him to a gay couple. One of the partners wants Tommy to sleep with him in exchange for the magic seeds, the most unfortunate sequence in a film that always seems to be on the verge of becoming truly offensive.

Finally, a plot is launched by Tommy, his best buddy (Kevin Heffernan), and their goofball gang to steal his sperm back from the sperm bank—”Operation Desert Sperm.” Everything that can go wrong does in a mildly amusing but somewhat exhausting fashion. Tommy’s friends are fairly funny, especially stoner-idiot Zig-Zag (Nat Faxon), but not fully developed.

Chandrasekhar himself appears as a supposed real criminal the guys enlist to lead them into battle. This unfunny character, which plays off of ethnic stereotypes of Indians, turns out to be another misstep.

“The Babymakers” is not too deep, but it does have a good cast that tries hard. Despite a number of crude moments—most of them involving sperm and masturbation—the movie comes off as a tad endearing: Tommy will do anything to make his Audrey happy.