Surrogacy and slapstick humor make good mix
When I see a movie preview with actors or actresses best known
as
”
Saturday Night Live
”
cast members, I automatically think it is going to be a really
dumb comedy. Think back to
”
Wayne’s World
”
one and two, which I have to admit I actually really love. Add
to that a title like
”
Baby Mama,
”
and a movie preview where someone cops to farting in a purse,
and I had really low expectations when heading into the
theater.
Surrogacy and slapstick humor make good mix
When I see a movie preview with actors or actresses best known as “Saturday Night Live” cast members, I automatically think it is going to be a really dumb comedy. Think back to “Wayne’s World” one and two, which I have to admit I actually really love. Add to that a title like “Baby Mama,” and a movie preview where someone cops to farting in a purse, and I had really low expectations when heading into the theater.
Though Tina Fey has her writing chops as one of the few women writers for SNL, this movie was written and directed by Michael McCullers. McCullers wrote for “Saturday Night Live” in 1997 and 1998. He also wrote movies starring several cast members, such as “Austin Powers: the Spy Who Shagged Me,” “Austin Powers in Goldmember” and “Undercover Brother.”
This movie, however, does a delicate balancing act of maintaining highbrow and lowbrow humor with the unlikely topic of surrogacy.
“Baby Mama” is about a single woman who is an executive with her company who finds herself alone and infertile at 37. After several rounds of in vitro fertilization and failed attempts at adoption, she decides to use some of her well-earned money to pay for a surrogate.
Tina Fey plays Kate Holbrook, the successful single woman, and Amy Poehler plays Angie Ostrowiski, her surrogate. The two play well off each other, probably from their years together on “Saturday Night Live.” For a while they were co-anchors of the nightly news skit and Fey’s Holbrook looks a lot like her anchor persona.
The movie is full of little casting surprises. Kate’s fertility doctor is played by John Hodgman, the PC representative in the Apple commercials, and a member of “The Daily Show” cast. Hodgman hands out the bad news to Kate that he doesn’t like her uterus and tells her that her conceiving is a one in five million chance in the same deadpan voice he uses on Comedy Central. When Kate goes to the Chafee Bicknell Center for Surrogacy to discuss her options, Sigourney Weaver shows up on screen as Bicknell. The interaction between the infertile Kate and the much older, but still able to conceive Bicknell is amusing. Steve Martin is another notable side character as Kate’s wacky Zen boss.
The main interactions, of course, are between Kate and Angie. Angie chooses Kate from all the other wannabe mothers she has interviewed. But when Angie and her deadbeat common-law husband hit the rocks, Angie shows up at Kate’s place with nowhere to go. Kate’s doorman Oscar (Romany Malco) tells her she has “baby mama drama” when Angie arrives and the name of the movie finally makes sense.
Kate and Angie are the epitome of the odd couple. Kate is neat, organized and focused on her job. Angie can barely stop smoking for the sake of the baby and is happy to sit around the house, playing the “American Idol” karaoke video game. In the first few months, the two are constantly at odds with each other. But the more they get to know each other, it is clear that each can teach the other something.
Kate encourages Angie, who likes to put together her own outfits, to consider fashion design school and to move on with her life without relying on a man. Angie reminds Kate that even if work is the center of her life, she can still go out and have some fun.
The movie does have its funny moments, especially a scene in which Kate has just baby-proofed her house and Angie can’t figure out how to get the baby latch off the toilet. There are a few of those slapstick comedy moments in the movie.
It is a predictable movie so of course some drama arises between Kate and Angie partway through the pregnancy. And of course when Kate first runs into a Jamba Juice-like smoothie shop run by Rob (Greg Kinnear) who insists it is nothing like Jamba Juice, it’s pretty clear they are going to end up together. They deal with a little of their own drama as well before everything ends happily. Everyone who wants a baby gets one, and they all make some unlikely friends along the way.
Playing in theaters now, rated PG-13.
For a complete list of movie capsules now showing locally, go to www.pinnaclenews.com.
