Baby Mama Fails the Comedy KO Test

Baby Mama, the comedy featuring Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, has a lot of potential, but unfortunately, like many other movies from this extremely tough genre, it still leaves you feeling ‘that could have been a fabulous movie!’ Make no mistake; the movie is not a washout. It does have its great moments, but that is essentially the problem. A great movie is way different from a good movie with few great moments.

The first part of the movie is fantastic to watch, but it is the second part that gets you. This is director Michael McCullers’ debut as a feature film maker, and that shows in the movie. The movie lacks the finesse that a seasoned veteran director from the comedy genre could have given the movie.

More than anything, what you feel at the end of Baby Mama is a sense of an opportunity for a great laugh lost. McCuller’s inexperience in directing movies at this level and this genre shines through.

The acting itself is good, and the lead actors have a formidable supporting cast to back them up, with actors of the caliber of Steve Martin and Sigourney Weaver in the fray. It is good to see alien hunting Sigourney Weaver in this new role. Fey too makes the switch from TV to the movies smoothly. You can find no trace of her 30 Rock character Kate, for which she had won an Emmy, anywhere in Baby Mama.

Fey plays Kate, a still single VP of Round Earth Organic Market, whose president is the zany Martin. All is well in Kate’s life, except that she still isn’t a mother. When a fertility specialist tells her she has a very slim chance at motherhood, about one in a million, she decides to go the surrogate route.

That is when Kate lands up at an up-market center offering surrogate mom services, which has as its head Chaffee Bicknell, essayed brilliantly by Weaver. The crackles start when Kate meets the woman who would be carrying her child, Angie Ostrowoski, played by Amy Poehl. The two are diametrically opposite – the corporate Kate vs. the cocktail-downing Angie.

Kate and Angie have to stay together, and that is when the movie gets predictable with its oddball couple routines; they are nicely handled, but you sort of expect them and go, ‘ah! But I knew that was what was going to happen!’

Other actors in the cast include Greg Kinnear, who essays the role of potential love interest for Kate; Holland Taylor, who plays Fey’s mother, strong on opinions; Dax Shephard, who plays the conniving common-law husband of Angie; and also Romany Malco, who plays the doorman.