Film Review: The Donor Party

Now and again a film comes along that promises to extract humour and high jynx out of unpromising material. 'The Donor Party' (tagline: 'Everyone's invited to c*m') certainly sets out its stall unequivocally, to the point that I wondered if the BioNews editors had decided to steer this serious and revered publication in a startling new direction.

For another example of a 'romantic comedy' about attempts to get pregnant, see 'Maybe Baby'. There is some humour in the mechanics of conception, but good luck trying to find it. It may be entirely in the eye of the beholder.

Having been asked if I would review 'The Donor Party' for BioNews, unfortunately, my sense of natural pluck and adventure kicked in and I accepted the challenge.

So here's the premise; forty-something Jaclyn, recently divorced, goes to the garden centre with her ailing shrub (it's all dried up and shrivelling!) and, while asking an assistant for horticultural advice, stumbles across her ex-husband and aggressively pregnant new wife. 'Unless it's nourished with good fertiliser,' advises the nursery worker, 'it won't bear fruit' (or words to that effect, I didn't write them down as I was reeling from the brazen use of an infertility metaphor in plant husbandry). Ok, we get it. Jaclyn wants a baby, and for that she requires… a fertiliser.

Poor Jaclyn is then forced into an awkward conversation with the duo, which rapidly descends into an exercise in insensitivity. The wife, blandly attractive, is bitchily stroking her massive pregnancy bump like Blofeld with his cat; is it possible to ever get away from the horrible 'smug marrieds' trope so blatantly featured in the Bridget Jones franchise? Yes, they exist – as we know all too well, there is literally no asset or prop that, in the wrong hands, can't be weaponised to belittle or humiliate one's friends. In this case, Jaclyn's ex-husband is oblivious to the obvious cruelty of the situation, having never wanted children during his long relationship with Jaclyn.

I digress, of course, because our heroine, Jaclyn, is soon howling about her fate to her sympathetic friends, Molly and Amandine who, as is obligatory in this genre, are supporting her through advice heavily marinaded in mid-afternoon white wine.

Of course, Jaclyn can't adopt a baby – far too expensive! Never mind that Jaclyn does not look short of a dollar or two, and neither do her friends, who live in easeful Californian eco-homes with pools… but OK. How about donor insemination? Also too difficult! The 'solution' is, they will throw a party, ostensibly for Molly's husband's birthday, but full of single men eager to flirt and possibly get it on with Jaclyn. She will be free to steal their sperm and achieve the desired pregnancy! What could possibly go right?

A fear of spoilers prevents me from giving you the lowdown on the farcical set-up, which involves a series of intimate encounters where Jaclyn attempts to harvest sperm without consent from a selection of hapless or downright sinister men.

One of these, TV personality 'Shirtless Chef' Jeff Torres, is also a Jeff Goldblum impersonator (a high point of the film) while mediocre portrait painter (and 'dark web surfer') Jerry is used as a mouthpiece for some of the least appropriate things to ever say to a woman.

Having been weaned on Austen and Brontë, I looked in vain for a Darcy figure to save the day, or at least to provide an example of masculinity that was not either toxic, or self-satisfied, or over-needy. Reader, he never came.

The acting is committed, and if there is a hint of despair at the script they have to work with, the ensemble brings utmost professionalism and great timing to the project. And yes, even in Hollywood, bills must be paid, so in that sense, good luck to everyone.

But 'The Donor Party' joins a canon that attempts to extract humour from a subject of awful complexity. Is it simply too difficult to take the central premise, a woman who has held off having a child with her husband because he didn't want one, without asking where her own sense of agency was in that relationship? Simply turning her into a 'desperate older woman' is the usual lazy stereotype. Even more problematic is the lack of consent involved in the sexual transactions, with the subterfuge Jaclyn is willing to employ to have unprotected sex.

It doesn't actually matter that many of the laughs are at the expense of the men whose DNA Jaclyn is, um, collecting, or that the film is so clearly meant to be a farce in time-honoured tradition (albeit owing more to gross-out movies like American Pie, than, say, The Importance of Being Earnest).

While the film doesn't shy away from accepting its problematic premise, it is best viewed through its own simplistic lens. It is not particularly funny (too many ghastly characters) and has nothing very interesting to say about the disparity of choice available to men and women when it comes to procreation.

I felt neither enriched nor entertained by viewing it, but don't let that stop you. Be ready to invest heavily in high-quality snacks and heavy-duty scrolling if you decide to give this film a go. My personal highlight was that I didn't have to rent it for £3.50, having accidentally found it for free while jabbing at the TV controller.