Wednesday, April 23, 2008

So what's the prognosis, Fertile Myrtle?

Regular readers know that I'm a big fan of Tina Fey. Over the years she's graduated from SNL staff writer to Weekend Update co-anchor to 30 Rock creator to award-winning TV actress. And through it all she's written most of her own material. This makes her new film Baby Mama a slight change of pace; while staying within the SNL family, she cedes control to Michael McCullers, who also wrote Austin Powers and Undercover Brother.

That's not to say that her role and dialogue lacks her distinct touch. The film is about surrogacy and an odd coupling, but is basically a buddy comedy using women instead of men. Kate (Fey) is a single VP exec of a supermarket chain similar to Whole Foods, reporting directly to an aging hippie CEO (Steve Martin, with a ridiculous ponytail). Afflicted with babyfever and a fickle uterus, she finds a surrogate through an agency (owned by Sigourney Weaver, older but not terribly different from her Working Girl days).

As Angie the surrogate, Amy Poehler is meant to be worlds apart in financial security and sophistication, but it doesn't take long to see the two women mesh, as the two actresses have built-in chemistry. The plot is mildly predictable, but is a nice mix between silly and serious. Greg Kinnear shows up as Kate's love interest, and Romany Malco has the funniest lines as Kate's straight talking doorman.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I'm loving your chosen photo of Amy holding my favorite torture device.

Baby Mama Movie said...

Baby Mama is actually worth the watch, I was very impressed with how much I liked it, like I said, from the trailer, it doesn't seem like a good movie, but when you watch it, you get the laughs and the smiles that the movie promises.