Baby Mama (2008)

Saturday Night Live, whether or not you consider it still funny, is going through a great period. Ratings are fairly high coming off of the writers' strike. The show is riding the Democratic nomination race wave pretty well, featuring either Clinton, Obama, or both in at least one sketch per episode. Due to their recent successes, it makes sense that SNL's comedians want to branch out into movies like they successfully did in the 90s with Wayne's World. Baby Mama serves as one of these movies, featuring Tina Fey and Amy Poehler at the helm and at least two more members from the SNL team in the background, namely Will Forte and Fred Armisen. Steve Martin, a frequent SNL host, can also be found in this movie. After reading the character list, it's clear where the SNL comparisons and references come from.

Considering its origins and its genre abroad, I went into the theater with relatively low expectations. At most, I hoped for a sort of feel-good comedy that had a lot of laugh scenes that made up for some corny drama scenes. I got the laugh scenes, but surprisingly, the drama scenes weren't very corny. Baby Mama, as can be determined from the title, deals with Kate Holbrook (Tina Fey's character), a powerful businesswoman and executive in an organic foods company and her burning desire to have a baby and build a family, regardless of the difficulties. Unlike most comedies, this is actually a surprisingly serious topic, which enhances the dramatic parts of the plot quite a bit. You can actually take the characters and the story line quite seriously. Actually, Kate's character is almost entirely serious, aside from the occasional jokes on how uptight and socially inept she can be. Most of the laughs come from Angie Ostrowiski (Amy Poehler's character), a not exactly high-class girl working for Chaffee Bicknell's (played by Sigourney Weaver) surrogacy agency that offers to be Kate's surrogate after Kate attempts and fails to get pregnant multiple times. As can be expected from Poehler, Angie is completely and totally ridiculous. Poehler is actually extremely good in this role, since she manages to play a "white trash" stereotypical character without coming off as corny, or at least most of the time.

Don't get me wrong; there are times when you can't help but cringe. A small portion of the humor is just far too corny, and can't make you laugh no matter how ready you are to laugh. However, anyone who watches Saturday Night Live is already used to this, since everyone knows that not every SNL skit is funny. Not by a long shot. However, the entire movie is irresistibly cute. The character development is fantastic, and Poehler and Fey working together really carries the entire movie. In fact, the men in the story are almost entirely irrelevant. Carl (played by Dax Shepard), Angie's low-class, tactless boyfriend, could have been much funnier than he actually is. Rob (played by Greg Kinnear), although a nice character and a nice addition, really only serves as an attractive male (and yes, he is very attractive in this movie) and someone to move the story along a little bit. Barry (played by Steve Martin), the president of the organic food company Kate works for, is an absolutely insane hippie that provides a lot of humor to the parts of the movie where Kate is at work. Five minutes of uninterrupted eye contact, anyone? (You'll get it when you watch the movie.)

At the end of the movie, you do really feel for the characters, or at least Angie and Kate. The other characters are sort of background even at the end, but they're still necessary, since there would be no offset to the Fey-Poehler humor that can just be taken in small doses to avoid becoming too corny to be enjoyable. I did find myself screaming on the inside a little at the end, because there's a gigantic time gap that left a lot of questions unanswered and irritated me quite a lot, but in reality, in order to fill out the entire story, this would either have to be a 3 hour movie, or there would have to be a sequel. This isn't the kind of movie to have a sequel, so I can see why they did it. I just think that some of the time that they wasted on Carl could have been used to develop that a little more.

Overall, Baby Mama is cute, and that's all I can see it ever trying for. It also seems to me to test the waters a little bit for a Fey and Poehler match-up that, when smoothed out a little around the edges, will be a very strong comedy duo. I did enjoy this film very much, and I would highly recommend it to someone who watches SNL frequently and likes Poehler's style of humor, or someone who just wants to go to the movies to have fun and feel good. It's certainly worth it. However, what I find more significant at the moment is my excitement for films in the future that will feature Fey and Poehler, and I truly hope that the film industry doesn't miss out on this potentially hilarious team. I'll be eagerly awaiting the day when I see them working together again - this is a first time, and it can only get better from here.