If you woke up this morning and felt you needed to see a trailer frothing over with semen jokes, it’s as if the planets have aligned to tell you that you need more therapy and that the redband trailer for Babymakers has poked its little head out onto the internet. This is the Broken Lizard movie that isn’t a Broken Lizard movie. Instead of the gang from Beerfest trying to impregnate everyone, it stars Olivia Munn and Paul Schneider (Away We Go, Lars and the Real Girl) as a couple who have trouble conceiving. Fortunately, Schneider’s character donated a bunch of great sperm years ago. Unfortunately, it’s all gone, so he has to try to steal some of it back. Good old Kevin “Farva” Heffernan is on board as the sidekick, and Jay Chandrasekhar is directing and playing an Indian mafia killer (complete with genuine Indian accent!). As for the rest of the Broken Lizard gang, they look like they’re relegated to the background here. Check out the trailer for yourself:

Recently, I found myself looking for a movie to watch that was Christmasy and festive, but not necessarily something so holiday-themed that it had Santa Clauses, reindeer, and Jesuses in it. You know, something about normal people but set around the time of the holidays. While perusing all of the top ten holiday movie lists that I could find around the web, I saw one title keep popping up again and again, Richard Curtis’s Love Actually. I never saw this one when it came out, it just looked like another generic romantic comedy to me, but it turns out a lot of people love to watch it every year around the Christmas season. And further research led me to the fact that a lot of people mention it as one of the few romantic comedies that’s actually good from the last decade as well. Sounded strong enough for me to give it a watch. It turns out I didn’t much care for the film, though, and my need for something Christmasy had been left unsated. Not willing to go out on another limb, I decided to revisit a film that I had already seen before, one that I remembered enjoying much more than I was expecting to back when it was released. This second choice was Thomas Bezucha’s 2005 film The Family Stone, which already seems to be rather forgotten. Luckily for me, time did not prove my idiocy, because upon a second watch I found that I still enjoyed [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Say what you will about any of their movies, but Broken Lizard takes chances. They’re one of the only comedy groups that have successfully navigated the waters to continue translating their brand of humor to movies. If you don’t think it’s that hard, just ask The Whitest Kids U Know. Their latest is The Baby Makers – which should prove an interesting challenge since it wasn’t written by the group. The script from Peter Gaulke and Gerry Swallow (Black Knight, seriously, Black Knight) focuses on a man who discovers he can’t make baby juice anymore, so he hatches a plan with his friends to rob a sperm bank that has some of his deposits. Paul Schneider will be bringing his nuanced talent to the lead role, and now Variety is reporting that Olivia Munn has joined the cast as well. Her role isn’t clear at the moment, but it very well may be the wife of the newly impotent robber. Munn played a small role in Slammin’ Salmon – as the bitchy, trying-too-hard girlfriend of a man trying to propose – and her appeal is pretty obvious (considering she’s willing to dress up like Chun Li and lick an Apple TV), but her personality is way too caustic. It doesn’t seem to fit with the overall (sometimes mindless) joy that Broken Lizard brings to projects, although it might make a nice foil. Who knows. Maybe her character will call for exactly what she has to offer.

The next film from Broken Lizard, the comedy troupe behind such movies you’ve probably watched in a college apartment as Super Troopers and Beerfest, is now in development and has a leading actor signed. The Baby Makers will be directed by Broken Lizard mainstay Jay Chandrasekhar from a script by Ice Age: The Meltdown writers Peter Gaulke and Jerry Swallow. As for that leading actor, the comedy troupe has scooped up indie darling Paul Schneider for the starring role. You may know him from such things as All the Real Girls, Lars and the Real Girl, and plenty of other things that don’t have the words ‘real’ and ‘girl’ in the title. The film will be about a young couple who are having trouble conceiving, which leads to the husband convincing his friends to help him break into a sperm bank and retrieve a donation he made there when you was younger. In addition to Schneider, The Baby Makers will also star Kevin Heffernan as the nutty best friend, Chandrasekhar as an Estonian thief, and other Broken Lizard members such as Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, and Erik Stolhanske doing who knows what. I’m not as big a fan of Broken Lizard’s movies as many other people seem to be, but they’ve had some strong moments, and I do have kind of a giant man crush on Paul Schneider, so I’m looking forward to giving this one a chance. [Variety]

Jane Campion’s ‘Bright Star’ is an intensely romantic film that’s never trite or dated, despite its PG rating and early 19th century setting.