I SHARED writer/director Peter Templeman’s big-screen debut with “reel mums” who’d brought their bubs to watch professional party-thrower Jonah (Ryan Kwanten) questing for a woman to conceive a child with him in three weeks before surgical removal of his cancerous left testicle makes fatherhood impossible.

I perceived a certain shared resonance between that theme and those women nursing real-life recent results of conception. There was no way that the screenplay could fool these gals. But a few seats along from me was a man whose incessant falsetto giggle made me wonder whether his experience might have seen the other side of Jonas’ coin.

Serious matters, conception and surgical castration. Templeman’s plot works hard to generate laughter. Perhaps too hard. As Jonah unsuccessfully asks past lovers and a lesbian couple to help him achieve an ambition lacking forethought, we see that while he’s a pretty lad, he’s selfish and not the sharpest pencil in the box. He platonically shares his house in what looks like Surry Hills with business partners Gus (Ryan Coor) and Stevie (Sarah Snook). We don’t need crystal balls to tell us where the plot is going.

And that, alas, is what lets down a film that looks at a theme of acceptable gravitas yet not so grave that it can’t induce laughter as its creator intended. Forget the brief glimpses of still lifes and empty train tracks that neither illuminate nor advance the plot. The film’s purpose is Jonah’s quest, aided by Stevie, to find a willing womb before it’s too late. The rest is fluff.

That said, I’m bound to offer praise for the film’s Sydney-scapes and an admirable cast dealing impressively with what is, by any measure, a delicate issue with innumerable variations.

At Dendy