Comedic duo and former SNL stars Tina Fey (“Mean Girls”) and
Amy Poehler (“Mr. Woodcock”) team up in “Baby Mama,” a comedy about creating a
family in a culture obsessed with reproduction. Written and directed by first-time
director Michael McCullers, the film features clever humor and fresh jokes.
Fey’s sharp wit and smart sex appeal along with Poehler’s oddball schtick and
crazy antics are the perfect combination.
In the film, Tina Fey plays Kate Holbrook, a successful
37-year-old businesswoman who, after years of paychecks and promotions, decides
what she really wants in life is to have a baby. Kate becomes obsessed with
getting pregnant, only to discover that she is infertile and her chances of
getting pregnant are one-in-a-million. Thus, she hires the crude-yet-charming
Angie Ostrowiski (Amy Poehler) to be her surrogate mother. Kate’s doorman,
Oscar (Romany Malco), immediately dubs Angie the “baby mama.” “You pay the
bills, she has the baby, that’s called a baby mama. Ask any black man in
Philadelphia,” Oscar tells Kate.
Kate and Angie could not be more different — Kate wears suits
and eats only organic food while Angie sports shrunken jerseys and subsists on
a diet of Pringles and Red Bull. But when Angie leaves her loser of a husband,
Carl (Dax Shepard, “The Comebacks”), she arrives at Kate’s door with a duffel
bag, and hilarity ensues as the two women move in together and prepare for the
baby’s arrival.
As Kate and Angie develop their relationship, their
respective quirks are exposed, but somehow their antics render them more
likeable. For example, in an attempt to baby-proof her apartment, Kate installs
an indestructible lock on her toilet, forcing Angie to urinate in the sink. While
this is obviously juvenile and disgusting behavior, it has to be asked — who
puts a lock on their toilet? Kate helps Angie grow up, and Angie helps Kate,
who was previously confined to the business world, move out of her comfort zone.
In their respective lead roles, Poehler and Fey are quirky yet believable.
But these two women soon realize they have bigger problems
than a dirty bathroom sink or a possible addiction to high-fructose corn syrup.
The twists and turns of Angie and Kate’s pregnancy even manage to surprise
viewers.
“Baby Mama” is full of the awkwardly clever moments characteristic
of both “Saturday Night Live” and Fey’s role in the 2004 smash “Mean Girls.” However,
some of the film’s other characters are awkward to the point of being
uncomfortable. Some of the more eccentric supporting roles in “Baby Mama” fall
short of likeability or believability. Kate’s boss, Barry (Steve Martin, “The
Pink Panther”), the new-age tree-hugger who is actually a ruthless entrepreneur
is just too bizarre to be funny. At one point he tells Kate he’s going to
reward her hard work with “five minutes of uninterrupted eye contact.”
Another such character is Chaffee Bicknell (Sigourney Weaver,
“Vantage Point”), owner of the Center for Surrogate Motherhood. Much to Kate’s chagrin,
Chaffee manages to get pregnant several times the natural way, even though she
is at least 10 years Kate’s senior. She credits her fertility to a
sugary-sweet, positive attitude. Characters such as Barry and Chaffee may exist
to upset Kate, but they will get on the viewers’ nerves as well.
Another problem is that the movie’s ending seems forced, and
the status of Kate’s relationship with her smoothie-making boyfriend Rob (Greg
Kinnear, “Fear of Love”) is left too ambiguous. The film’s ending remains
rather predictable in contrast to the plot’s many surprises. However, the
material is fresh, and the laughs are consistently clever.
Tina Fey has gained notoriety with her work on “SNL” and the
sitcom “30 Rock,” but “Baby Mama” is her first leading film role. “Baby Mama’s”
downfalls are in its bizarre supporting characters and abrupt conclusion, but
at the end of the day, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler could still make people laugh
just by reading the phonebook.
3 stars
out of 5
