Baby Mama

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are two of the smartest and brightest women working in comedy today. So, it's writer-director Michael McCullers' own fault that he didn't let them contribute to his own screenplay. Baby Mama is light on laughs, and so conventionally plotted, it seems timid. The movie is afraid to think outside of the box, afraid to break free of its own cliches, and seems to think the audience will have a fit if anything remotely unexpected happens. Though it's worthy of a few mild chuckles here and there, this is a movie all too willing to put aside the genuine talents of its stars in favor of the mediocre.

Career-driven Kate Holbrook (Tina Fey) has been too busy climbing the corporate ladder at the organic food corporation she works for to start a family. Now that she's 37, her maternal clock is starting to go off, and she's become obsessed with having a baby. (Cue the sight gag where she walks into a business meeting, and she sees everyone as a baby.) Unfortunately, she discovers the chances of her naturally conceiving a child are slim, and the adoption approval process takes too long. She decides to try a surrogate mother program, and the woman in charge of the program (Sigourney Weaver) assures her that their clients are of the highest quality. To the surprise of no one in the audience, Kate is teamed up with a goofy white trash floozy named Angie (Amy Poehler). The original plan is that Angie will carry and give birth to Kate's baby, but when Angie has a fight with her sleazy live-in boyfriend, Carl (Dax Shepard), she ends up moving in with Kate, and their high class/low class lifestyles immediately begin to clash when they're forced to live in the same apartment.

It's an idea that has worked in countless movies and TV sitcoms, and given the talent on display, it could have worked here. But Baby Mama is as toothless as many of the infants that Kate is obsessed with during the film's early scenes. I have nothing wrong with conventional plotting or structure, but there has to be some sign that the movie knows it's playing by the book, and give us something else to enjoy. Last weekend's Forgetting Sarah Marshall was just as predictable, but easily won me over with its smart sense of humor, extremely likable characters, and a genuine sense of heart and energy. I got the sense here that writer-director McCullers (a long-time writer of Saturday Night Live, who has also contributed to the Austin Powers films) wanted to play it so safe for his first filmmaking gig that he didn't really trust his own material. He never once steps out of line, and the film suffers. We immediately know what's going to happen when Kate meets a cute single guy (Greg Kinnear) who works at the local fruit smoothee shop. We immediately know that Kate and Angie will be able to put aside their differences and eventually become friends. We know they're going to have a falling out. We know that the scuzzy Carl is going to try to bring up some painful secret that Angie doesn't want anyone to know about in order to embarrass her in front of everyone in some sort of public function. The movie foolishly acts like this is all new to us, and that we're supposed to be delighted by such developments.

Fey and Poehler are at least good sports, and give the best they can in their performances, even if they do lack the inspired comic spark of their best work. The thing is, they're too smart for this material, and are never allowed to rise above it. The time they get to spend together on screen is surprisingly muted, and aside from a cute scene where they play a karaoke video game together, they seem reigned in and one-note most of the time. Fey is forever the straight-arrow, and Poehler is always the slightly ditzy and childish one. Surprisingly, the biggest laughs belong not to them, but to the supporting cast. Sigourney Weaver gets some laughs in her introduction scene, and I especially liked her deadpan delivery as to why it costs more to give birth to a baby than it does to kill someone. Steve Martin also seems to be having a lot of fun as Fey's loopy, aging hippie boss, who is obsessed with new-age business practices. Even Romany Malco, as Fey's smart-mouthed doorman, gets a couple moments to stand out. Everyone manages to get some laughs in, but they are never big enough to make us forget that we've seen everything before, and done much better than it is here.

As a star vehicle for these two talented women, Baby Mama is not exactly a successful one. It doesn't play up their strength for intelligent comedy, and simply plops them into something that could have starred any semi-talented comic actress. If Fey wants to become a leading woman, I suggest she write her own film. Her screenplay for Mean Girls a few years ago proves that she has what it takes. I think Poehler has the talent as well. They just need to find a project that believes in them enough to let them carry the film.

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