BABY MAMA

Written and Directed by Michael McCullers
Starring Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Greg Kinnear, Sigourney Weaver and Steve Martin


Kate Holbrook: It’s nice to feel needed, useful, important.
Angie Ostrowiski: I like all of those words.

This one’s for the ladies! Here we have one woman, Kate Holbrook (Tina Fey), who cannot get pregnant and then enlists another woman, Angie Ostrowiski (Amy Poehler) as her surrogate, or in the more contemporary sense, as her BABY MAMA. Angie leaves her dope of a common-law partner and moves in with Kate and the two go from cat fighting to slumber parties in no time. They’re having babies; they’re talking boys; they’re singing along to Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” in the living room. The estrogen practically slinks off the screen in stilettos. If only this expectant comedy didn’t deliver such expected results.


The female bonding originates with Fey & Poehler’s offscreen friendship and makes for some fabulous chemistry and spontaneous hilarity but it never successfully hides the gaping story holes. Having paid an exorbitant amount of money to a firm that screens its surrogates thoroughly should have essentially eliminated Angie as an option, as she has no functional understanding of what it means to take good care of herself. Before long, perhaps to intentionally rattle us from the unoriginal unfolding of the odd couple one would ordinarily expect, Angie’s intentions come into question in such a manner that it becomes practically impossible to continue letting the good times just go on. Good clean fun is replaced by awkward angst.

This contemporary comedy draws our attention to the business of babies. It does so however in such a hackneyed fashion that if it weren’t for the talented mama’s at the forefront of it all, it would be little more than a painful delivery.