watching movies one cup at a time

Tina Fey is awesome. She may not be the best actress in the universe but what she is capable of, she does extremely well. Baby Mama is the story of Fey’s character, Kate, who decides that after years of being a career-centered woman she now wants to make room for a family. Unfortunately she finds many road blocks in making that happen and decides to go the surrogate route. Amy Poehler becomes the surrogate and eventually winds up living with Kate. From there we get a lot of “The Odd Couple” type of jokes but it never gets stupid or overly-cliche. And eventually both characters make changes for the better.

It is an interesting view of contemporary family life. The nuclear family has eroded to the point of extinction as modern life keeps changing and more possibilities become available to people. And in the end, as long as there is a loving, secure environment, it shouldn’t matter if a family has 2 moms, 2 dads, just 1 parent or any combination. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are given some chances to stretch and show some real emotion and I believed it. They pulled it off.

Tina Fey is not credited with writing this but it has her humor all over it. It was written by first-time director and long-time writer Michael McCullers who was a writer on SNL with Tina Fey. It’s a smart script with characters that are real women and not some generic Jessica Alba bimbos.

There are several great cameos including Steve Martin as a CEO/egomaniacal hippy that runs the Whole Foods-ish store chain that Kate is a VP of, and Sigourney Weaver who plays the woman running the surrogate agency and is popping out the kids despite the many jokes about her age. Supporting characters played by Greg Kinnear and Romany Malco are also well done and resist the temptation to be two-dimensional.

It isn’t the funniest movie ever, but it is entertaining and enjoyable. If you like Tina Fey, you won’t be disappointed.