MOVIE REVIEW: BABY MAMA

Five of Seven Cows

Now it’s official – Tina Fey can carry a movie. Where Mean Girls hinted at her potential, Baby Mama confirms Fey’s talent for smart, sharp-but-still-kind comedy -- not always tasteful, perhaps, but usually stopping short of vulgar. Of course, anyone who’s seen her work on 30 Rock and Saturday Night Live knows this. Indeed, her writing, and co-hosting of Weekend Update provided some of the latter show’s all-too-rare bright spots.

In Baby Mama, Fey plays Kate Holbrook, a successful vice-president of an organic foods company who seemingly has it all. All, that is, but a baby. When confronted by the news that she’s infertile, she finds the solution in a trashy surrogate mother with an even trashier common-law husband. Angie, played by Fey’s fellow Saturday Night Live alum Amy Poehler, brings the “odd” to this odd couple with scene-stealing hilarity. Dax Shepard deserves special mention as Angie’s common-law husband, Carl. He’s got the deadbeat-slacker persona nailed, and delivers a lot of laughs for a relatively minor character.

Baby Mama confirms that Fey has the on-screen presence to compete with cast heavyweights like Steve Martin, Greg Kinnear and Sigorney Weaver. All are great, as usual, and Fey and Poehler fit right in. Especially fun is Martin’s take as the aging hippie capitalist. It’s fun to see the tree-bark and granola crowd poked fun at for a change, and Martin captures the infantile pseudo-spiritual character perfectly. Greg Kinnear plays a former lawyer and owner of a smoothie shop, and brings brooding nuance to a character that might easily have been forgettable.

Parents these days are rightfully gun-shy when it comes to movies of this type. Humor often runs from coarse to truly vulgar, and usually gratuitously so. Baby Mama is a “values-free zone” for sure, but not nearly as bad as the plot and trailer might suggest. Foul language is present but not over-the-top, and sex is alluded to but not shown. Single-motherhood is obviously integral to the plot, and sex is treated casually. If you’ve seen the trailer you’re more than amply warned.

While formulaic, obvious, and predictable, Baby Mama is genuinely funny. The characters are likable, the cast is great, and the script is pregnant with laughs, and it delivers! And worry not -- the writing is far better than that last sentence of mine.