Review - Baby Mamma

A very successful, middle aged, and single vice president of a natural foods company, has decided she really wants a child of her own before it is too late. Unfortunately for Kate Holbrook, she has found out that she has a million-to-one shot of ever birthing her own child. Completely distraught, she looks to find a surrogate mother to carry her eggs for her. Kate hires a surrogate who seems like the most unlikely of canidates and trouble ensues. Along the way Kate meets a smoothie business owner who she falls quickly for and develops a very interesting relationship.


Thankfully, Tina Fey did not write this terrible comedy about a professional business woman's maternal clock. Written and directed Michael McCullers who had previously written Austin Powers 2 and 3 with Myers, Baby Mamma is a comedy that successfully accomplished a completely unfunny film. I thought this would be extremely hard to do with the such SNL greats as Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Steve Martin, but Baby Mamma is so terrible, it barely even delivers a chuckle. I thought the film would at least deliver a few laughs, but the writing is so bad, all of the jokes fall very flat. Even with caliber comedians aboard, Baby Mamma just could not hold your interest and had you wondering when the misery would end.

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler do their best with what they were given, which isn't much. Most of the dialogue is not funny, and even delivered by Fey's perfect deadpan, it still goes unnoticed. Poehler's character is so overboard and so unbelievable that she is almost un-watchable throughout. The film definately falls face down in the comedy portion and that has everything to do with the writing and direction. Fey and Poehler are SNL alumni and Fey also has her hit television show 30 Rock, so we know they can deliver side-splitting humor, but here in Baby Mamma it hurts in a whole other way. McCullers who wrote two of the Austin Powers films and a few skits on SNL, should stick to fart jokes. His work on Baby Mamma simply, missed the mark by a mile!

There were two things in Baby Mamma that actually I didn't mind. Tina Fey did a perfect job of portraying a woman who wants a baby. In the opening montage, Fey notices babies everywhere, the way they smell and everything else about them. These opening scenes were done flawlessly and provided hope that the film would prove to be a quality feature. That quickly changed and Baby Mamma went downhill fast! Greg Kinnear was the only other redeeming factor to the film. His character as the smoothie business owner was good. The relationship he develops with Fey's character made the film watchable. I think without Kinnear's performance, I would have stopped watching. Kinnear always plays a good character, no matter how small and here again, he does not disappoint.

Overall Baby Mamma was a bad movie. It was a film I wished I hadn't watched after seeing it. It is not something that would grow on me either and I will avoid when it hits cable. I love Tina Fey, but I hope this is a film she was merely obliged to do and not a project she help create or for that matter wanted. Poehler also I like and am looking forward to her Office spin-off show coming to NBC, but here in Baby Mamma, she is unwatchable. Her character goes on and on, and never seems to get any laughs. Instead, you find yourself mumbling how stupid and wtf! I would recommend skipping Baby Mamma and re-watching Look Who's Talking, same idea and much funnier!