Baby Mama

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler prove that buddy comedies need not be the exclusive domain of naughty boys.

"Baby Mama" is no comic masterpiece, but it's at least as good as any number of formulaic comedies churned out by Hollywood and much better than many others. Fey is the uptight career woman who hears her biological clock ticking at 37 and wants to have a baby before it's too late. Poehler is the low-class, free-wheeling blonde who agrees to be her surrogate mother for a hefty fee. The usual odd-couple conflicts ensue, maternal instincts kick in, and in traditional sitcom style, everyone gets what they want in the end.

The movie is mostly an excuse to give Fey and Poehler the chance to riff off of one another, and they do it well. Poehler especially displays the ability to carry a movie, something most SNL veterans aren't able to do. She's funny, but she's also able to embody an actual character rather than simply do skit-T.V. schtick. Just watch her horrified face the first time she tastes water; or the hilarious scene when Fey wrestles her into the shower and begins to scrub the hair dye off of her head in a scene that spoofs "Silkwood."

Also starring Greg Kinnear as a smoothie store owner, and a whacked out Steve Martin as Fey's new age boss.

Grade: A-

The entertaining comedy duo of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler don't quite live up to expectations in this movie. Those two are usually very fun together and while there are some amusing moments in Baby Mama, I ultimately found it to be a bit underwhelming. A good supporting cast can't lift it out of mediocrity either.

"They're borrowing one tiny little egg and some space." Donna Regan, surrogate mother

When a woman is 37, generating a baby before the alarm goes off is no laughing matter. Yet first-time helmer Michael McCullers makes an amusing, sometimes poignant rom-com out of not-quite-Judd-Apatow (Knocked Up) wit, but spot on one-liners about the insane race. (Kate Holbrook: What you eat, the baby eats. What you listen to, the baby listens to. Oscar: If you listen to DMX, the baby comes out going' "Ennngghhh!") The film is helped by some fine performances, notably Tina Fey's understated, distraught exec, Kate; Amy Poehler's wired, white-trash surrogate, Angie; and Steve Martin's New-Age entrepreneur, Barry, reminding me of how intelligently Martin can spoof anyone, even himself. But it's the script that rules, taking even the interesting mid-life-crises comedies of the last few years (40 year Old Virgin comes immediately to mind) to a new level of un-hyped reflections about parenting and careers, love and lust, among others.

Kate's meteoric rise in Barry's Whole-Foods-like company is never savaged for leaving her late to the baby business; it is rather a trade-off treated as reasonable that now must be factored in the decision to have a baby before 40 or whenever.

Even fertility, or its enhancement, gets its comeuppance with Sigourney Weaver's smarmy, smug surrogate agency head (remember her Katherine in Working Girl). In other words, while the odd-couple cliché of Kate and Angie, polar opposites, living together is unabashedly mined, the SNL and 30 Rock insights are in tact, flat at times, but overall bright commentary on a complicated contemporary situation that is both serious and funny.

The ending is the only authentic failure of the film—it's unimaginative writing is married to a Hollywood-enforced good feeling out of synch with the untidy enterprise of surrogate mothering and romantic fulfilling. In other words, because the ending is too pat and unbelievable, a surrogate writer should have been commissioned.

The good point - Romany Malco and his Oscar. The worst point - the final part. But, at first sigh, a nice, easy comedy with significant names in cast and with the so predictable end , against logic. So, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler in the sauce of cliches.

There weren't too many people hotter than Tina Fey in 2008. Between the smash comedy 30 Rock, her impression of GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, and taking the lead for the first time in a movie with "Baby Mama," Fey and her iconic black-rimmed glasses have soared above and beyond Saturday Night Live. While the film "Baby Mama" might not be her most notable exploit, it's brand of subtle humor works in her favor and makes for an enjoyable film.

Fey plays Kate, a late thirties (her true age) businesswoman who has never been married and is also incapable of conceiving a child though she desperately wants one. When Kate stumbles across an agency specializing in surrogate pregnancy, she meets Angie, a high school dropout played by SNL's Amy Poehler, and the two agree that Angie will have Kate's baby. When Angie's trash boyfriend Carl (Dax Shepard) cheats on her, she moves in with Kate and the two have to reconcile their conflicting lifestyles.

Though Fey carries her own comedic presence in her reactions to the bizarre characters around her, it's Poehler's character that is meant to serve as comic relief in her mis-educated habits in life and in pregnancy. She provides a variety of physical humor and also gets some laughs at her character for her sheer ignorance, though it's pretty hit-or-miss with her. While in a lot of her work she can come off as annoying, she's a bit more mild in this film.

The rest of a cast is full of high profile actors in smaller roles and other familiar faces to boost the unproven star power of Fey and Poehler. Greg Kinnear plays Fey's love interest, who is just supposed to be a "nice guy" and nothing more and Maura Tierney of "ER" plays Fey's sister. Top that off with appearances by Steve Martin as Fey's zen/hippie boss and Sigourney Weaver as the head of the surrogate agency and there's plenty of time for "look who it is!" amazement as you watch.

"Baby Mama" doesn't throw anything unusual at us from a comedy stand point, especially being released not even a year after Judd Apatow's "Knocked Up" provided a similar concept, but it has its own subtle, very SNL-like comedic style. That might be easy to say because Fey, Poehler and creator Michael McCullers connections to the show, but like SNL sketches, "Baby Mama" relies on the talents of its actors in creating nutty characters and the way the "normal" characters perceive them. While this doesn't work all the time, it gets better toward the end and the plot keeps you interested enough to wear you certainly don't dismiss it and you may even really like it.