Uma Mãe para o Meu Bebê

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 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.

When I first saw the trailer for Baby Mama, I just thought this movie was going to be a total disaster, it didn't look funny and like another typical chick flick. But my friends wanted to see it, so we saw it opening weekend, and actually I was surprised, I did like a lot better than what I was expecting. Baby Mama is something that looks like from the Lifetime Network, but it's all good, it has some really funny moments and was just cute. Amy Poehler and Tina Fey are two very funny women from Saturday Night Live, they also did Mean Girls together and made their characters an absolute joy to watch, so seeing them as the leads in this film was going to be an interesting turn. Tina Fey definitely has a lot of talent not only as a writer, but as an actress, she made her character believable and as neuritic as she was, she was still likable. Amy Poehler made her character a little too SNL at times, but these girls made the movie enjoyable and a fun flick to watch for the afternoon.

Kate is a single and successful woman who seems to have it all in life, but one thing she wants so bad is a baby. But one problem, her uterus isn't liked by her doctor, in other words, she has a one in a million chance of getting pregnant. After adoption woes and sperm donor failures, she decides to get a sergeant mother who will get pregnant and give her a child. She meets white trash couple, Angie and Carl. Angie moves into Kate's apartment after her break up with Carl, so this "odd couple" has to teach each other some new moves in life.

Baby Mama is actually worth the watch, I was very impressed with how much I liked it, like I said, from the trailer, it doesn't seem like a good movie, but when you watch it, you get the laughs and the smiles that the movie promises. It is a chick flick, warning to people who have a strong hatred for them, but I'm not a fan of chick flicks, and you know what? I thought that this was just a fun movie that if you let go and even enjoy the predictability, you'll find yourself loving Baby Mama.

7/10

"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.

Fey and Poehler were the 'Saturday Night Live' dream team. Consistently witty and constantly hilarious. But these results are usually produced when they are performing their own writing. McCullers, mostly of 'Austin Powers' fame, unfortunately places too many restraints on these two leads that consequently hold the overall comedy back, despite its sweet lighthearted tone. A single businesswoman, who mostly puts her career before her personal life, desires to conceive a baby but is unable to due to certain complications. She then proceeds to go down the surrogacy route and forces her lifestyle choices upon the surrogate mother.

"I don't like your uterus, I really don't like your uterus". It's a warm tale on motherhood, executed at such a pedestrian pace that it's as if McCullers, who opted to direct this also, was imitating a baby's first steps. It's slow, mostly wobbly, but you can't help but smile at the effort put in. Fey and Poehler emit their natural chemistry once again, and it truly is infectious. The supporting cast also had a few humorous moments, especially the legend that is Weaver who only has to smile and I'm laughing hysterically. Unfortunately the material that out leads are given prevents them from showing their true comedic talents. Rarely did I snigger let alone laugh, which is a dire shame considering my adoration for the SNL dream team. McCullers approach to the idea of surrogacy was naively basic, and it's because of this that the film ultimately felt underwhelming.

The dialogue between them surprisingly lacked personality, conforming to predictable clichéd traits for each character. It probably doesn't help that I dislike babies/infants/most small humans, so shoving a dozen of them in my face almost immediately was probably an indicator. Still, its light endeavours into surrogacy using two of my favourite comedians made for a watchable yet forgettable "comedy" that was absent of laughs. Needed Weaver to release her inner Ripley, then we have a film worth investing in!