Baby Mama Review

Pregnancy, it seems, is more in vogue right now than having your police officers have differently pigmented skin colours on buddy buddy action flicks of the '80's. First out of the snatch was Waitress (unwanted pregnancy), then Knocked Up (one night stand unplanned pregnancy) and then Juno (teenage pregnancy). No wonder the world is overpopulated to the point of suffocation so that every resource we have is slowly but surely running dry and the earth will soon be nothing but a smouldering garbage dump populated only by cockroaches and robots. Well Baby Mama is the surrogacy take on the pregancy film.

Due to her hectic businesswoman lifestyle (and T-shaped uterus) Kate Holbrook (Tina Fey) has never dropped any sprogs. But she desperately, desperately wants to. With her birth canal more likely to have abandoned shopping trolleys in it than babies she decides to put her eggs in Angie Ostrowiski's box. The trouble is Angie is played by Amy Poehler which means her character is a) stupid, b) annoying and c) stupid and annoying. As the baby starts its descent the two become friends and much female bonding ensues.

That last part wasn't a dig at Amy Poehler its just I've never seen her do anything but be a little stooopid. She does it well and the dizzy, uncouth hick is a nice counter balance to the witty sophisticated one-liners of the wonderful Tina Fey. A good idea to put Maura Tierney (Abby from ER) into it as she makes anything at least 23% better. The big surprise though is Steve Martin, putting in an extended cameo as Kate's hippy aura reading boss. More of this type of stuff Steve and we may start to forgive the last 10 years of your 'career'.

For the most part Baby Mama is a funny, warm hearted movie. A few twists help keep the film on track but the pat-happy, rushed and ultimately awful ending almost spoils all that has come before. The film is saved though by Tina Fey's guarded cynicism. She is a genuinely funny woman who shared a few too many similraities with my first girlfriend for this movie to be a wholly enjoyable experience. Ah lost love! But then again I could never be with a woman who liked Chris DeBurgh. Never, never, never.