Baby Mama

To be gifted with the ability to make people laugh is an honor, and with films, script writers can't know for sure what will evoke an uproar from the audience. A lot of times things are a hit in miss with humor. I'm not saying this movie isn't funny, because i did laugh. However, i didn't laugh as hard as i thought i would. The lack of giggles this movie inspired in me is enough to provoke me to label this movie as a letdown. It's not that this movie is bad, or an awful way to spend an evening. It's that movies are an art-form and there is no art to be found. I think a movie is great if two days later you're still actively trying to find someone to talk about it with. i was ready for the movie to end twenty minutes before the credits rolled.

I know what you're thinking. It is a comedy.It is not meant to be insightful. All this is true, but it still didn't meet the specific requirement that ever movie has to. It has to be worth the 8.50 cover charge, and it isn't. I recommend taking that money to a local bar, and buying a pretty lady a drink.

Say what you will about the marketing machine, but I truly think the people behind promoting Baby Mama did a bang up job…even if I believe they did so without trying. They make expectations so low in the trailer that you almost have to enjoy the film. Was it a great comedy? No. However, it was much better than I ever could have hoped as Michael McCullers takes us places you never would expect going in. I thought that it would be a water-downed, overlong SNL skit with one woman asking another to carry her baby, leading to a generic odd couple pairing with hijinks and gags piling on top of each other, collapsing under its own weight. Instead we are treated to a pretty sentimental and touching portrait of two women learning to grow and evolve with help from the other, a person, in both regards, that they never would have thought could teach them anything. Even the pregnancy aspect takes a ton of twists and turns never becoming the straight shot gimmick just bringing everyone together. The surrogate mother here must make some tough decisions as she continues along on her journey, lending a side to the tale that actually brings it to a level of intrigue that no Lorne Michaels film has done in recent memory.

I don't want to ruin the plot points of Angie Ostrowiski's pregnancy, but let's just say it isn't cut and dry. Her motives aren't genuine, something that is obvious from the start, just not quite in the way you anticipate. There are surprises for her and secrets hidden from the other characters as she wrestles within herself. A "white-trash" loser, attached to a man that believes waiting on the phone to be the 132.7 caller is a job, Angie learns a lot while with mom-to-be Kate Holbrook. Kate, being the professional VP of an organic food market, is a very detail orientated woman who is by the books and unafraid to tell others what they should do. It is an oil and water connection, but—like all good relationships of this kind—breeds some real funny and touching moments. Who thought watching Karaoke on the Playstation could be so much fun? Sure many instances feel like skits written separately and plugged in later, (the clubbing while pregnant, the press conference ambush, and the surrogate therapy session—probably the funniest scene without question), but they are surprisingly strung together to make a pretty coherent whole.

The other thing that the trailer hides is the inclusion of two great male roles. Did anyone know that Greg Kinnear and Steve Martin were in this thing? I for one was completely surprised by both, almost chuckling that they would have a small cameo until I realized that both were key roles to the whole. In the best turn of the film, Steve Martin is crazy, hippie genius. His earthy style of living, complete with long ponytail and soft speech, even when angered, is classic, as is everything uttered from his mouth. He is so good that I would be thrilled to have him offer me 5 uninterrupted minutes of staring into his eyes as a reward for a job well done. For Kinnear's part, he plays the usual love interest that is commonplace in films of this ilk. It's not flashy and it's not very original, but Greg is a stalwart and pulls off the good guy persona, even including a little bit of physical humor at the end.

Overall, though, this film is pretty standard fare. It goes into very broad comedy at times and very sappy/overly-sentimental drivel at others. There are some good jokes sprinkled throughout and for the most part keep it fun for the duration. Definitely feeling longer than it is, I never quite felt bored and I did begin to get invested in the story to see how it all would turn out. A lot of that can be credited to the chemistry between Tina Fey and Amy Pohler as Kate and Angie respectively. Both these women do a great job with their roles, fleshing out the psychotic relationship to perfection. One of the successful dynamics is how Fey becomes a mother figure to her surrogate. Even going so far as having temper tantrums and rubber-faced reactions, Pohler is a child.

It's also nice to see some fun moments from the supporting cast, but again nothing really sticks out to vault anything into must see territory. Sigourney Weaver is actually kinda scary in a very weird role; Romany Malco has plenty of great one-liners and facial expressions; and John Hodgeman is a bit odd in a small bit, with laughs coming more from the recognition of his Mac commercials than anything he does in the film. In the end, while nothing over-achieves, it all adds up to a pretty solid comedy worth a view. Is it necessary to see on the big screen? Probably not, but if you were worried that it might be a train-wreck, just know that it never takes any chances to risk derailing, and that's not a bad thing.

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!

"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.

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-