By Emilia Benton
The new comedy “Baby Mama” opened the Tribeca Film Festival last week, an accomplishment that many would think would be reserved for one of the top films of the season. While the premise of the film keeps the viewer in mild suspense and interested in the final outcome, “Baby Mama” ultimately fails to deliver any comedic originality.
The film stars Tina Fey as Kate Holbrook, a successful executive for an organic grocery chain. Despite all of her achievements, her family can’t look past the fact that she’s 37, single and childless-something her mother refers to as an “alternative lifestyle.” Though she has just been promoted to vice president of the company, she still has her mind wrapped around the idea that she needs to be a mother to feel complete.
Kate begins seeing babies everywhere and decides that if she wants to be a mother, it’s now or never. After many failed attempts at becoming pregnant naturally and looking into adoption, Kate settles on surrogacy. However, she decides to go through a private surrogacy “business,” run out the home of the owner (Sigourney Weaver), which comes off as very unrealistic.
Enter Angie Ostrowiski (Amy Poehler, of “Saturday Night Live” fame), a working girl from Philadelphia, chosen by Kate to be her surrogate mother. Angie and her boyfriend are admittedly in it for the money and her trashy personality and lifestyle aren’t too much of a stretch for Poehler, as it is seemingly copied from the sketches she frequently plays on “Saturday Night Live.”
As Kate prepares for her baby’s arrival, she gets a surprise visit from Angie, who is homeless after leaving her boyfriend. Kate decides to let her move in and quickly discovers that the childish Angie isn’t doing a good job at all at educating herself on maintaining a healthy pregnancy. Kate catches her breaking many rules, from eating junk food to dyeing her hair and even smoking.
The film’s supporting characters are made up of an all-star cast that includes Steve Martin and Greg Kinnear – one that would ideally save this film. But from Martin’s role as Kate’s hippie boss to Weaver’s super-fertile surrogacy specialist, their personalities seem arbitrarily placed in the story lines and are generally unfunny. Despite the film’s bland attempts at humor, viewers can’t help but feel for Kate and hope that she’ll have a happy ending in her quest for motherhood.
Based on the fact that Fey is a “Saturday Night Live” alumna (she served as head writer and as a regular cast member, so we know she’s funnier than this) and wrote the successful 2004 comedy “Mean Girls,” one would expect “Baby Mama” to come with plenty of laughs and originality. And while it is clear that Fey and Poehler are capable of more, viewers wonder if perhaps this comedy would have lacked less in wit if foolish film executives had let Fey write the thing herself.
Unfortunately, they didn’t and in the end, most of the jokes are ill-timed and fall flat, depending a bit too much on cheap laughs related to Angie’s bodily functions, among other things.
Audiences are most likely to come out of this film knowing that they basically got the whole story in the trailer. They’re left hoping that Fey sticks to writing that and Poehler stays in television.
(allmoviephoto.com)