‘Baby Mama’ Movie Review (2008)

Tina Fey’s no bullshit mentality has managed to gain her followers. She first impressed us on “Saturday Night Live”, then with her screenplay and small role in Mean Girls and now she is out to prove that she can carry a film with her “SNL” bud Amy Poehler. Unfortunately, Baby Mama is a movie you would expect Tina to make fun of rather than star in. It’s cliche and just as predictable as any other comedy of its ilk. Sure, Fey and Poehler add their little piece to the puzzle, but it isn’t enough to save this dog.

Fey stars as a 37-year-old single business woman that has climbed the corporate ladder and has finally reached that stage in her life where she goes baby crazy. Adoption is out due to her job. Artificial insemination is out due to her “T-shaped uterus”, which give her a 1-in-a-million chance at getting pregnant. What’s left? Surrogacy.

As you would expect, Fey finds a completely incompetent woman (Poehler) to fill her needs and the white trash babymaker makes all the mistakes you would expect. Some of it is funny, but this movie would have been better served had it been about a dysfunctional friendship rather than a dysfunctional surrogacy because as it is you know exactly where it is going to end up.

None of the fault of this film’s issues lies with the cast, however. The problems here are all story related. Fey is great, as is Poehler. Romany Malco is entertaining as Fey’s doorman and even Dax Shepard is decent considering the last time I saw him it was in Let’s Go to Prison and I would have rather burned my eyes out than see him in a film again.

Some are saying Steve Martin steals the show, but all he amounts to is a feng shui vegan nutball, and he plays it no different than we have seen it before. Sigourney Weaver is also a cliche as the owner of the surrogacy company. The running joke there is that she is too old to be having children yet she continues to pop them out. When you find the humor in that let me know.

Overall, the biggest disappointment is that this flick stars Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. We have come to expect these two to make something outside of the norm rather than say a few questionable things inside a film that pretty much is the norm. Both are better than this and hopefully their next project will live up the standards they have created.

GRADE: C

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