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Dancing_P [ 6.0 ]
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A lot of the criticism directed at Knocked Up adressed the fact that women got kind of a bum rap considering they're the ones who actually get pregnant. Baby Mama seems to offer the flipside of the coin, presenting two female protagonists that go through a pregnancy and are fully developed female characters. Unfortunately for them, Baby Mama remains written and directed by a man and one that hasn't got his shit together quite as well as Judd Apatow.
What starts off as a promising spin on the surprisingly fertile (pun intended) pregnancy sub-subgenre is undermined by sitcomish direction and an overabundance of generic plot twists and contrivances. Tina Fey plays a successful, single executive of an organic food company whose biological clock starts ticking. Unable to concieve, she hires a vaguely trashy surrogate (Amy Poelher) to have the baby in her place. They're forced to live together after the surrogate leaves her no-goodnik husband (Dax Shepherd) and spend the rest of the movie in familiarly kooky Odd Couple situations.
Fey and Poelher are probably the two funniest actresses in Hollywood right now; they're almost single-handedly responsible for every laugh in this movie. They've got great chemistry and timing, managing to sell the otherwise pedestrian script. Director Michael McCullers is an SNL veteran whose biggest cinematic endeavor is writing the Austin Powers movies and it shows; the movie runs out of breath at regular intervals (not coincidentally, about the length of an average SNL skit). For a broad comedy, this can be excused; for a movie that attempts to uphold a semblance of a plot and character development, not so much.
The film lacks cohesion throughout despite the cast's best efforts. The pregnancy gets kind of lost in a myriad of shenanigans (including a completely unnecessary 'save-the-rec-center' subplot with an independent juice bar standing in for a rec center) and even the editing seems haphazard, as if to cover up major
failings of continuity or to rework punchlines. It's completely watchable if poorly constructed; Fey and Poelher deserve better.
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DokBrowne [ 7.5 ]
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Sticks to a series of plot formulas and isn't hilarious per se, but consistently amusing, a good showcase for the personalities that comedy queens Tina Fey and Amy Poehler inhabit on their excellent TV shows (Fey's a bit more type A than Liz Lemon and Poehler's not type A enough to be exactly Leslie Knope but the same comic details are employed by each), and a happy, warm-hearted affair populated by funny, talented, endearing people (besides Fey and Poehler, there's Greg Kinnear as the love interest, Maura Tierney as the sister, Romany Malco as the friend, Steve Martin as the eccentric boss, and Sigourney Weaver as the fertility clinic head). Might not be enough for some types of people, but it was for me.
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| Weighted Rating | : 6.4 |
| No. Ratings | : 4 | |
| No. Reviews | : 3 | |
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