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Once upon a time, Ally McBeal spent five seasons of her career-dominated litigating life trying to find Mr. Right.  The answer wasn’t the boring childhood sweetheart or Bon Jovi or even ROBERT DOWNEY JR.  It was a kid.  A kid accidentally conceived through a clinical trial egg donation (I’m not making this up).  A kid she would raise alone, sacrificing the job that drove the show for the previous half-decade.  The weird sorta-feminist-but-not-really-feminist-at-all conclusion was representative of the whole series, if not logical (I mean, ROBERT DOWNEY JR!).  And the message of modern motherhood glorification has resurfaced in recent comedies.

Knocked Up and Juno put the “hijinx ensue” in the logline of unexpected pregnancy, but a more prominent trend now is a woman’s intentional conception, choosing parenthood.  Sometimes, choosing it alone.  The resulting offspring are Sperm Babies.

Okay, so technically, all babies are sperm babies.  But not all babies require this kind of celebratory fertilization process.

Want more cheeky conception fun?  Go to The Back-Up Plan‘s website.  There’s a game you can play to create your own back-up baby (I’m not making this up either).  Which leads me to the first element of Sperm Baby movies…

INSEMINATION GAGS

Because the world doesn’t have enough reproductive humor.  A couple things you can count on: turkey basters and toilet scenes.

Also, stupid tag lines.  Hey, “The Switch,” your marketing mantra isn’t funny because it isn’t true.  If it were an unexpected comedy, I’d be writing about you alone here as an original concept, and Jennifer Aniston would have been surprised when that pregnancy she planned, manipulated, and threw a party for resulted in a kid.  Zany fertility parties?  Sure, people do that.  If they’re Juliette Lewis.

If hearing about the birthing process isn’t your comedic cup of tea, there’s always the semen as a possible instrument of hilarity.  The real laughs probably come from the sounding boards, if they’re Conrad from “Weeds” or Jeff Goldblum, who tells you that the basis for this whole film was “ill-advised.”

PLANNED PREGNANCY

Ever since Judd Apatow gave us the impression that the horror that is pregnancy could be funny, the prep for a kid has become a viable part of Sperm Baby movies.  While tracking down the fertilizer, the mother generally commences self-education on parenthood.  This includes observing parent friends, which inevitably leads to poop jokes (on that note, who thought we needed another Heigl/crap combo?).  I haven’t seen The Back-Up Plan, but apparently there’s a birthing tank involved, too.  Birthing classes are also an option.

PARENTING

The more realistic offerings of cinema acknowledge that children age, and that once the baby is achieved, the story is not over.  In this instance, the leading lady or ladies need to develop actual parenting skills.  It helps if mom is more than an accessory in the kid’s life, letting him run amuck in big stores in New York, responding with a “Yeah, he does that…” sigh-shrug combo where the Reprimand Parenting Step goes, à la Kassie in The Switch.  It’s bad enough she’s played by “the woman who acts with her hair,”* but really?  The character can’t muster up enough semblance of a connection with her son–whom she KNOWS to be a neurotic mess–to be within a moderately close vicinity to him while he’s flipping out over his first rock climbing experience–AT HIS BIRTHDAY PARTY?

The best filmic parenting consists of conflict, humor, and a level of absurdity.  Like in real life.  Like in the perfect kids-in-rom-com example, One Fine Day.  I know I just through you for a loop with that vintage Clooney reference, but stay with me.

This is spot on.

THE KIDS

Kids are plot devices, so I’ll just use this section to post a brief note to the General Hollywood Wardrobe Community:

18 year olds should not be wearing pajamas pants all the time.  6 year olds are a waste of $60 Lacoste polos and bathrobes.

THE SEED MAN

The sperm donor in this type of movie is becoming a type of stock character, written about on Jezebel as a Modern Dream Man.  His inclusion in the family unit, romanticizing the clinical connection, reinforces that genetics matter.  However, they don’t matter quite enough to follow the scientific rules of dominant/recessive eye color traits.

In case you, like the casting director, also missed out on high school biology, I’ll explain.

GENOTYPE	PHENOTYPE
BB	Brown-eyed person
Bb	Brown-eyed person
bb	Blue-eyed person

Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman are both blue-eyed (bb) people.  What are the possible outcomes for two bb people making babies?

 

 

 

	b	b
b	bb	bb
b	bb	bb

Wait a minute.  The only possibility is bb!  And that manifests as blue eyes!  And that kid has brown eyes!  They really should have picked someone different to play his mom…

Despite the message behind this interesting tidbit I found online, the presence of the baby daddy reaffirms the need for a male, undercutting any modern mom heroism attached to going it alone–especially if he’s a romantic interest. Baby Mama almost skirts this by focusing on a second woman bringing the child into the world as a surrogate, but ultimately falls back on the smoothie man crush story. The Kids Are Alright parents are coupled from the start, their “modernity” connected to their queerness, which never changes.  But the presence of their donor–furthermore, their children’s desire for him–suggests there’s something missing in the same-sex parent household.  Some following plot points don’t help to counter-act that notion much.

The Seed Guy is thus typically an archetypal picture of masculinity (’cause obviously modern gals still want someone with physical prowess over sense of humor): leather jacket, motorcycle, works with his hands, 8 o’clock scruff.  There’s also the different but equally unsubtle breed of man: Nordic, athletic, virile.

I decided to only write about produced films here so my dear handful of readers can follow along, but I have also come across a lot of unmade turkey-baster baby scripts lately.  The road-to-pregnancy ones in particular boggle me.  It’s telling that having a family is a badge of honor in these times–an ultimate goal and reward, as true love once was in romantic comedies.  And women are going after it regardless of their circumstances, taking control of their futures.  But not their independence.

Reactionary tales of accidental pregnancy tend to play better on a story basis, because it is still hard to comprehend a protagonist actively and consciously trying to destroy her own life.  Trust me, this is no slam on having babies, or pushing them out yourself, or even designing them yourself.  I’m merely pointing out that kids will absolutely destroy the life you have.  They may bring about a much better one, and personal growth happens, and your stoner one-night stand becomes your boyfriend and reads the baby books, but the old life?  Dead.  And in screenplay world, the hero has to fight to maintain the status quo.

Speaking of reactionary tales, I’m stoked for Due Date‘s testosterone and Galifinakis-soaked flavor of Man-boy Grows Up To Face Real Responsibility.  With ROBERT DOWNEY JR.

*Jeff Phillips deserves full credit for that concisely accurate description of Jennifer Aniston.  I stole it because I was getting tired of  using “beige.”