Baby Mama

Baby Mama

Successful, single businesswoman Kate Holbrook has long put her career ahead of a personal life. Now 37, she’s determined to have a kid on her own. But her plan is thrown a curve ball after she discovers she has only a million-to-one chance of getting pregnant. Undaunted, the driven Kate allows South Philly working girl Angie Ostrowiski to become her unlikely surrogate.

Simple, predictable, treacly premise…in anyone else’s hands. In the hands of Fey & Poehler, it is a hit. It definitely manages to touch a nerve, but with humor. Combine Fey’s wit with some great casting and you are guaranteed a good time.

Poehler’s Angie was a bit over-the-top (is there ever a time she isn’t over the top?) but the obnoxious behavior at the outset is necessary to illustrate the journey her character, and Fey’s, travels.

Greg Kinnear always adds to a movie and this is no exception. When I see him on screen I know I will enjoy his performance, even if the rest of the movie sucks.

A nice surprise is Romany Malco as the over-involved doorman – with a heart of gold 😉 Even with all the lines she gave him, the part could have been a throw-away in lesser hands (or, more likely, considerably overplayed) He keeps you laughing

Steve Martin is one of my faves, more as a writer than a performer, and his part here seems more stunt (or homage) than anything else. It works fine, but was unnecessary. Sigourney Weaver pulls off her bit quite well, though I never really connected to what she was trying to convey – is she a good guy or a bad guy? Compassionate or opportunistic?

In supporting roles we have Maura Tierney (good), Holland Taylor (fabulous), and several SNL alums (fine).

I did have a few nit-picky complaints, though nothing serious enough to be a deal breaker (see below, they’re spoilers). You don’t need to see this on the big screen, though, unless you want to see it NOW.


Rotten Tomatoes: critics 61%; users 69%;

the spoilers:

* * * * * * * SPOILERS AHEAD * * * * * * *

Perhaps this isn’t so much a spoiler, it was almost a given from the moment we see Greg Kinnear on screen. Fey’s character gets pregnant. OK.

But that means, in this day and age, she was having unsafe sex with a man she barely knew. Right off the bat. Seems like an odd message coming from such an ‘enlightened intellectual’.

Also, when she finds out she’s pregnant, it is after she has passed out and they run blood tests. She protests the impossibility of the diagnosis and the doctor insists, even going so far as to say, “you’re only about 8 weeks along, but you are definitely pregnant” I never knew a doctor could pinpoint a date of conception from a blood test – is that something new?

And, of course, there is the whole, why would she choose a woman like Amy Poehler’s character to be her surrogate? As completely controlled and uptight as she is, it seems odd she would choose the first, and clearly most obnoxious, woman to come along.