Vertical movies have become more and more popular and I think that I can confidently say they’d be more – if they didn’t cost a fortune to watch. $19.99 a week is a lot of money, especially in this economy. Yet, I find myself spending the money on Dramabox and I think – well the quality of productions are going up and I can totally respect this.
One of the latest that I have watched today was A Deal With My Billionaire Donor and TBH, I kinda loved it. So many tropes – flash marriage, office romance, falling in love with the CEO… it was a lot. Was it toxic? Absolutely.
I can recognize that.
However, I watched it and couldn’t turn it off.
This movie is, about, “Claire Miller, desperate to have a child after being diagnosed with premature ovarian failure, vows to get pregnant before her ex’s new girlfriend gives birth. Enter Ethan Reed-a billionaire forced to marry or lose his inheritance. They strike a “sperm contract” for mutual benefit, but when Ethan becomes her new boss, sparks ignite and emotions blur. Can a fake marriage born of pride turn into real love?”
I have to understand why it is that all of these though believe that you need to have a contract marriage and it’s always with a billionaire. And as I type that I also love that storyline.
We all love tropes, even if you say you don’t. I don’t believe that everyone doesn’t love a trope, because they are everywhere. They are in everything. I will reiterate – a I do with all of these – the amount of violence and slapping should be toned down. Violence and sexual assault DO NOT need to be the plot that moves a story forward.
Flash marriage anyone? Yes please. Claire isn’t having a good day. She finds out that her egg supply is dwindling and the doctor tells her if she wants to be a Mom, she needs to start trying within the next three months. As if that isn’t a big enough blow, as she’s leaving the hospital, she runs into her ex – who cheated on her relentlessly.
She’s been broken up with her ex for three months, but his girlfriend is six months pregnant. He, of course, goes straight to telling her that she’s gross and all sorts of references to her eggs drying up. She stands her ground, but ends up making a bet that she would be pregnant within the three months. She lies and says that she has a boyfriend and basically they are perfect genes.
Now, who should overhear this but Ethan Reed. He’s the CEO, the heir, the everything to the Reed dynasty. He doesn’t intervene, but after he has a proposal for her. He will give her his sperm to use, if she marries him. He wants everyone off his back about getting married. It seems perfect.
No feelings involved.
But, you know as soon as anyone is like no feelings, there are always feelings. Especially when they are sharing something so very intimate as a baby. And marriage? Why does everyone think it will be easy? It never is.
Claire and Ethan are friendly and determined to make this work. He’s delivering on his part – giving his sample first so she can be inseminated. I don’t think he realized how excited that he would be to become a father, but you can see that almost instantly that’s changing for him and he knows what he wants.
To our surprise, she has to deliver on her part of being the doting wife almost instantly. He takes her to meet his Mama and she’s uber supportive. No billionaires Mama in the vertical I have seen have ever been this supportive, so I am definitely a little (a lot) confused.
I guess the want for grandchildren is stronger than thinking that your new daughter in law is a gold digger. Mad respect.
One thing I love about verticals is that it never ceases to shock me that these billionaires are willing to spend so much money on businesses to make their wife or husband have a leg up. Ethan found out that Claire was getting a hard time at work, so he buys the company and gives her a promotion over the troll that is giving her a hard time.
Claire is excited, even when she finds out that her husband bought the company. She wants to keep their relationship a secret – which shocks him, because like who wouldn’t want to say that they are married to a billionaire.
We’ll tell you who Ethan – YOUR CONTRACT WIFE.
Enter Ethan’s bat sh** crazy brother who has returned from England. He wants to work and learn from his brother. Well that’s what he says, but he’s a liar. Chris (the little brother) is tired of being overshadowed and wants to beat his brother at something.
He doesn’t like being the spare.
He does apparently like being a psychopath.
While Chris does his best to destroy his brothers marriage, along with Ethan’s ex – Claire and Ethan grow stronger. They are falling in love and their marriage has become real to each one of them.
But, that just means people are going to work overtime to destroy it. And they come pretty close.
You see, Ethan goes out of town when Claire needs to be inseminated. Chris and the ex make it seem like Ethan did not want to get Claire pregnant – so Claire almost uses Chris’ sperm. Was gagging my way through that, cause GROSS.
Ethan and the ex show up just in time for Ethan to beat the crap out of his brother. Chris seems to enjoy that though and it’s making us question why no one has 5150’d Chris. It turns out though that Claire couldn’t bring herself to use the sperm (THANK HEAVENS) and the only person she wants to be with is Ethan.
So many laws broken in this whole thing, so little time. I have to say – while a lot of these things are repetative I don’t care. Nicholas Sparks is repatative too and I still watch. What changes from show to show is the production value and this one is definitely a lot better than most.
And then there is the actors. Cayman Cardiff and Erin Orcutt are both charming and radiate charisma. I loved the way that they worked together and off of each other. Some of the fight scenes had me laughing so hard my stomach hurt – but hey, we’ll get there.
Inner dialogue plays a main character in this movie (I know, I know – TV show, but it feels like a movie) as it does with most verticals. But I’ll take it. Just as I’ll take the ending of this one. It was fun and well, I laughed (even with a fear of clowns).
A Deal With My Billionaire Donor definitely felt like a telenovela, but for the entire duration I didn’t move, because I was all in. And yes, may have developed a little crush on Cardiff, but watch it and you will too.
