Review - Baby Mama

Baby Mama should have been written by Tina Fey. If it had been, it probably would have avoided some of the predictable and cliched writing that trip it up. Even these slight mistakes though can't rob the movie of its undeniable charm. Like pretty much everything that Tina Fey touches, Baby Mama just works. It works as a comedy, a chick flick and just about everything else that it tries to be. Michael McCullers should be thanking Fey and Poehler for their performances because they save what could have been a terrible movie, akin to other sentimental comedies like Forces of Nature. Luckily for him, Fey and Poehler have enough chemistry between them to make two hours seem like no time at all.
The story itself is realtively predictable. Kate Holbrook (Fey) has devoted her life to her career and now has a one in a million chance of becoming pregnant, despite her intense urges to procreate. Enter the surrogate: Poehler as Angie Ostrowiski, a rude, crude piece of white trash with few other prospects if the rather well-paying surrogacy job falls through. The film evolves pretty rapidly into Odd Couple territory with the two clashing over everything from what foods to eat to what songs to sing in a karaoke video game.
Fey shines especially bright in this picture, having finally realized herself as an actress in addition to her fine writing skills. She fills the movie with awkward pauses, looks and so many one-liners, clearly ad-libs, that the movie can't help but feel like anyone but hers. At the same time, she somehow manages to be a balanced, if somewhat neurotic, satirization of a consumerist society, as obsessed with her organic foods as she is with her ticking biological clock.
Poehler plays the exact white-trash character that she has always played on SNL and she plays it perfectly. She somehow even convinces you to like her character, Angie, even while she pees in the sink and sticks gum under the coffee table.
Even the supporting cast delivers laughs. Maura Tierney channels maternity and serenity as Kate's sister and Dax Shepard is perfect as Angie's commonlaw husband. The only exception is Steve Martin who tries way too hard to prove that he's still funny (he's not).
It's most definitely the performances that carry this movie. The story itself is barely adequate and the direction is not really worth noting. However, the cast of seasoned comedy veterans make everything about twice as good as it should be and Baby Mama will certainly keep audiences laughing. Tina Fey once again proves that she is the funniest woman on screen since Lucy.