Dir.
Michael McCullers, US, 2008, 99 mins
Cast: Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Greg Kinnear
Review by Francesca Neagle
“Now is this chocolate, or poo?” asks
the young mother. She grabs her son and scrapes off the brown
goo, tasting it with gusto.
“But what if that had been poo?” her
childless sister Kate yelps in horror?
This seems a good analogy for the suspicious relish with
which we treat new comedies deposited from the bowels of
America's Saturday Night Live.
Now comes Baby Mama starring SNL stalwarts
Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. Little is known of Fey's film
CV outside of excellent Mean Girls, but here she is front
and centre – attempting
to combine the knock-about zaniness of a Wayne's World or
Happy Gilmore with a female-orientated story.
Fey plays Kate, a successful, single
businesswoman who dreams of having a baby. When she discovers
she's infertile, she hires “white trash” Angie (Poehler) to be her
surrogate. When Angie becomes pregnant, Kate begins preparing
for motherhood in her own typically driven fashion – until
the surrogate turns up homeless at her door. With their conflicting
personalities putting them at odds, Kate must cater to Angie's
childish needs, learning first-hand about the challenge of
balancing motherhood and career. As if this wasn't enough,
she also begins dating the owner of a juice cafe, Rob (Kinnear).
Though Baby Mama and the performers
at its centre charm us more than we might expect, it's
rather uneven. Slow in some parts and really very amusing
in others, there are many genuinely witty lines. Yet these
too often draw on details rather than the plot. So while
references to video games, hip hop and old-school stereotypes
are all nicely laid out for us to laugh at, we sit back
waiting for them to mean something. Apart from making us
aware that, yes, the filmmakers are very “on-it”,
the narrative rarely benefits from these explorations.
Just as McCullers' screenplay feels like a set-up to a punchline
that never quite makes it to the screen, the flat characters
often never amount to anything more than stereotypes. Steve
Martin is hilarious as Kate's boss, who rewards his employees
with five minutes of uninterrupted gazing into his eyes,
but his New Age Zen zaniness tires quickly. And Sigourney
Weaver is quite brilliant as a savvy fertile female in the
surrogate parent business, though essentially a one-trick
pony. Even Kate seems flat, alternating between nurturing
mother figure to Angie and neurotic businesswoman, without
much in between. A cop-out ending also scuppers any development
for her.
The script is screaming for someone
to break out of their mould. Black doorman, Oscar (Romany
Malco) builds up a great chemistry with Angie when she
splits with her morally-dubious boyfriend, yet isn't allowed
to stop being single and get together with her. Why couldn't
they have paired up – because
he's black? Despite this conservatism, Poelher pulls off
the material and makes us warm to Angie. She's the only character
to develop convincingly. She's essentially a good person
placed in difficult circumstances, and her relationship with
Kate enables her to look forward to making a success of her
life.
Baby Mama is nothing brilliant. But even if it doesn't split
your sides, it's an amusing and welcome relief from the frat-boy
humour of many US comedy imports. It might not be chocolate,
but it doesn't have to be viewed as the other extreme.
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