Baby Mama Review

I got my hopes up for Baby Mama, a comedy by the hot Saturday Night Live team of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. It's not a bad movie and it has respectable preformances and a few laughs, but it's not a laugh-a-minute comedy. Still, Baby Mama is worth seeing with your significant other on a night when there's not much else to do.

Baby Mama stars Tina Fey (SNL and 30 Rock) as Kate, a 37-year-old single woman whose fast-paced executive job rules out relationships. Her biological clock is ticking and the call of motherhood beckons, but Kate can't conceive. After a few tries at a fertility clinic, she decides to fertilize an egg and have it implanted in a surrogate mother. Visiting a surrogate agency run by slightly creepy and far-too-fecund Chaffee Bicknell (Sigourney Weaver), Kate decides to use the gestation services of white-trash blonde Angie (Amy Poehler).

The next 45 minutes of Baby Mama are about the odd couple of Kate and Angie, one an uptight business woman who has an ordered and focused life, and the other an uneducated party girl who likes to drink and go to clubs. Angie also has a clingy and aggressive boyfriend who stirs some trouble into the soup. Then the last 20 minutes of the film switch to romantic comedy territory, as Kate sparks a relationship with Rob (Greg Kinnear), the owner of juice bar that's just a little too similar to Jamba Juice. In the meantime, Kate has to negotiate situations created by her flaky new-age boss Barry (Steve Martin), the owner of an organic grocery chain similar to Whole Foods.

Will Kate ever get her baby? And just exactly whose baby will it be? Do Kate and Rob have a future?

There were a few laughs in Baby Mama but not as many as I expected. Almost all of this has been done before and Baby Mama is so mainstream that it gets a few chuckles and that's about it. If you want to see an offbeat comedy about acquiring a baby, rent Raising Arizona -- Baby Mama could have used some of that film's out-of-kilter direction for greater comic impact. I'm surprised that someone like Tina Fey didn't insist on more edgy direction and production design, but hey... they don't ask me.

There's a bit of rough language and some adult situations in Baby Mama, but it's probably okay for teens 13 and older. Otherwise, it's just a competent light comedy that doesn't know if it wants to be a romance or something sillier. A wasted chance perhaps, but still worth three stars and a mild recommendation.