The Babymakers | Movie review

Paul Schneider and Olivia Munn in The Babymakers

Broken lizard, indeed: A faulty male member is the catalyst of Super Troopers and Beerfest director Jay Chandrasekhar’s new comedy, about a married man (Paul Schneider) who discovers he’s firing blanks after failing to knock up his knockout wife (Olivia Munn). It’s creative impotence, however, that really defines The Babymakers, a sub-Apatow farce that boasts little of the energetic silliness of the Broken Lizard canon—probably because it wasn’t written by the tight-knit troupe. You know Chandrasekhar is half-invested when even a montage of blows to the crotch (with each hit a potential cause of our hero’s “lazy sperm”) feels completely phoned in.

Essentially one long male-insecurity joke, The Babymakers finds Schneider’s Tommy attempting to get his hands on the last batch of healthy spunk he donated to the local sperm bank years earlier. An often sharp and compelling performer, Schneider is utterly miscast as the bumbling lead of a broad yukfest. (He mostly just looks embarrassed, and not in the way he’s supposed to.) The actor fares better than Munn, whose comedic chops—honed on The Daily Show—are completely wasted on a role that largely reduces her to eye candy. The biggest laughs, perhaps not surprisingly, come from Chandrasekhar himself, playing an Indian mobster hired to plan the sperm-bank heist. For a few manic moments, the film swims with Lizard-worthy inspiration. Otherwise, it lacks motility.