Baby Mama (2008)

This is not a terrible movie. It really isn't. It makes you laugh a few times, it's relatively pleasant, and Steve Martin does some comedy which reminds you that he's a genius.

Fifteen minutes into this movie, I leaned over to my wife and whispered, "Five bucks says this is a first time director." I come home, look up IMDb, and... if only she'd taken the be I'd be buying myself some candy with my Lincoln..

You really feel while watching it that the performances and script are both better than the finished product. Most of the camera work is tight like a television show, not a movie. A lot of the blocking is awkward, and you get the feeling that everyone is just a little uncomfortable. It's entirely possible that the movie would have been more enjoyable with a better director, but everyone had to start somewhere.

I feel very badly for Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, as both seem to struggle a bit with the material. You can see them having the urge to improvise and do more. And you wish that they had done more, because it's a shame to spend $10 to be mildly amused.

Fmovies: Amy Poehler is very funny and deserves far better than this weak, generic "comedy." Tina Fey is pretty much hot and cold, sometimes funny, but usually very annoying with her smug, self- satisfied delivery of every line. The movie's story is pretty well conveyed in the trailer and there aren't many surprises left beyond the predictable odd-couple set-up. Hell, even the poster tells you all you need to know about the plot. A lot of decent actors turn up in supporting roles, including many familiar faces from SNL, but NONE of them get big laughs or even make for a memorable scene. The last half-hour or so is completely laugh-free as it makes attempt to bring the two main characters closer together, and puts us to sleep in the process.

"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.

Baby Mama fmovies. 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.

There is a smattering of smart laughs in this 2008 comedy, but first-time director Michael McCullers really plods his own coincidence-driven script along with little sense of style or dramatic resonance. At times, it feels no better than a formulaic romantic comedy from the 1960's usually starring small-screen celebrities trying to break into the big time. Sure enough, this time, we are offered Tina Fey (currently of NBC's "30 Rock") and Amy Poehler, former "Saturday Night Live" Weekend Update co-anchors and definitely the cream of the current funny lady crop. The problem is that McCullers, a one-time SNL staff writer who also co-wrote the Austin Powers movies with Mike Myers, doesn't elevate the screenplay much beyond the limited dimensions of an extended comedy sketch. That puts most of the pressure on the two women to make this farce work as a distaff version of "The Odd Couple" with a pregnancy angle, and they often - you should pardon the expression - deliver.

Ideally cast with her smart, bespectacled looks, Fey plays 37-year-old Kate Holbrook, single and professionally successful as the VP of an upscale organic supermarket chain much like Whole Foods. She hears her biological clock ticking and is taking every step possible to have a baby. Her last straw is to pay an agency $100,000 to find a surrogate. Naturally, her polar opposite shows up as the ideal candidate - a junk-food-eating, Red Bull-swilling piece of white trash named Angie Ostrowski who comes with her money-drubbing boyfriend Carl. Kate is so desperate she is practically begging Angie to carry her egg, so Angie willingly accepts. Somehow, the women end up living together during the pregnancy and inevitably get on each other's nerves, more Angie on Kate's nerves since a few revelations threaten to upend the deal. Convenience appears to trump logic in tying up the plot's loose ends, of which there are many. However, McCullers' alternately sauntering and piercing Judd Apatow-like approach helps compensate for the bigger lapses.

A game cast also helps. Although fairly limited as an actress, Fey is sharp and likable as the often dour Kate and has the ability to bring the implausibility of her character's situation into more human focus. Even though she is entirely too old for her role, Poehler is a more natural comic presence as Angie, terrifically manic but surprisingly poignant during key moments. It's obvious their joint casting has more to do with their proved rapport than dramatic credibility. In a turn worthy of Jeff Foxworthy, Dax Shepard credibly makes Carl a mercenary sheep. Romany Malco (memorable as Andy's horned-up co-worker in "The 40-Year-Old Virgin") is given little to do as the streetwise doorman, the same fate of Maura Tierney bland as Kate's supportive sister. Greg Kinnear must be getting awfully tired playing the same type of romantic foil over and over again, but he does do it well even though his scenes also seem strangely truncated. Two veterans threaten to steal the picture in acts of petty larceny - a pony-tailed Steve Martin very funny as Kate's Zen-seeking boss whose idea of a reward is allowing her to stare at him for five minutes, and Sigourney Weaver as the overtly self-satisfied and all-too-fertile head of the agency. SNL regulars Will Forte and Fred Armisen show up in cameos. A fitfully funny farce.

Saturday Night Live, whether or not you consider it still funny, is going through a great period. Ratings are fairly high coming off of the writers' strike. The show is riding the Democratic nomination race wave pretty well, featuring either Clinton, Obama, or both in at least one sketch per episode. Due to their recent successes, it makes sense that SNL's comedians want to branch out into movies like they successfully did in the 90s with Wayne's World. Baby Mama serves as one of these movies, featuring Tina Fey and Amy Poehler at the helm and at least two more members from the SNL team in the background, namely Will Forte and Fred Armisen. Steve Martin, a frequent SNL host, can also be found in this movie. After reading the character list, it's clear where the SNL comparisons and references come from.

Considering its origins and its genre abroad, I went into the theater with relatively low expectations. At most, I hoped for a sort of feel-good comedy that had a lot of laugh scenes that made up for some corny drama scenes. I got the laugh scenes, but surprisingly, the drama scenes weren't very corny. Baby Mama, as can be determined from the title, deals with Kate Holbrook (Tina Fey's character), a powerful businesswoman and executive in an organic foods company and her burning desire to have a baby and build a family, regardless of the difficulties. Unlike most comedies, this is actually a surprisingly serious topic, which enhances the dramatic parts of the plot quite a bit. You can actually take the characters and the story line quite seriously. Actually, Kate's character is almost entirely serious, aside from the occasional jokes on how uptight and socially inept she can be. Most of the laughs come from Angie Ostrowiski (Amy Poehler's character), a not exactly high-class girl working for Chaffee Bicknell's (played by Sigourney Weaver) surrogacy agency that offers to be Kate's surrogate after Kate attempts and fails to get pregnant multiple times. As can be expected from Poehler, Angie is completely and totally ridiculous. Poehler is actually extremely good in this role, since she manages to play a "white trash" stereotypical character without coming off as corny, or at least most of the time.

Don't get me wrong; there are times when you can't help but cringe. A small portion of the humor is just far too corny, and can't make you laugh no matter how ready you are to laugh. However, anyone who watches Saturday Night Live is already used to this, since everyone knows that not every SNL skit is funny. Not by a long shot. However, the entire movie is irresistibly cute. The character development is fantastic, and Poehler and Fey working together really carries the entire movie. In fact, the men in the story are almost entirely irrelevant. Carl (played by Dax Shepard), Angie's low-class, tactless boyfriend, could have been much funnier than he actually is. Rob (played by Greg Kinnear), although a nice character and a nice addition, really only serves as an attractive male (and yes, he is very attractive in this movie) and someone to move the story along a little bit. Barry (played by Steve Martin), the president of the organic food company Kate works for, is an absolutely insane hippie that provides a lot of humor to the parts of the movie where Kate is at work. Five minutes of uninterrupted eye contact, anyone? (You'll get it when you watch the movie.)

At the end of the movie, you do really feel for the characters, or at least Angie and Kate.