Belly Full of Laughs

Baby Mama

(PG-13)

originally published April 30, 2008

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler

Former “SNL” Weekend Update anchors Tina Fey and Amy Poehler have reteamed for a seriously funny movie about infertility and surrogacy, not exactly two subjects naturally associated with yuks. Kate Holbrook (Fey) is a successful businesswoman. However, her decision to put her career ahead of family has her at a crossroads. At 37, she’s content with her decisions, but she wants a baby; she wants a baby very badly. Unfortunately, being a single woman makes adoption agencies skittish, and her T-shaped uterus does not please her fertility specialist. Enter Angie Ostrowski (Poehler), the working class womb found - for quite a price - by preternaturally fertile surrogacy agent Chaffee Bicknell (Sigourney Weaver). Forced to live together for the duration of the pregnancy, Kate and Angie forge an Odd Couple-like bond. Kate is the fastidious Felix, and Angie is the slovenly Oscar. But like some pregnancies, complications ensue.

Baby Mama may mark the beginning of a new, unbeatable big screen duo. Separate, Fey and Poehler are funny. Fey stole all of her scenes in Mean Girls, and Poehler has outshone the “SNL” buddies she was meant to support in several small roles. Together, the two might be unstoppable. I would welcome a series of Fey/Poehler pairings, especially if they were written by Fey, who proved her writing chops with the aforementioned Mean Girls and “30 Rock.” That wish is not to denigrate “SNL” scribe Marshall McCullers’s feature writing and directing debut. McCullers’s pithy script breezes past its several stereotypes and flop gags. Baby Mama is not simply an “SNL” sketch stretched beyond its limits. Heck, the film compels Steve Martin, as a self-absorbed, organic market magnate with a ponytail, to be funny for the first time since 1999’s Bowfinger. The rest of the supporting cast executes their roles properly as well. As the token love interest, Greg Kinnear pretty much makes cute and stays out of the way. But this baby belongs to the mamas, Fey and Poehler, not the daddies, finally putting to rest the sexist assumption that men are funnier than women.

Drew Wheeler