Fans of Tina Fey never know which
Fey will show up to a new project. Sometimes it's the warm-but-diamond-sharp
Fey who created and stars in the often unspeakably great sitcom 30 Rock. Other times, it's the
I-know-what's-best-for-you Tina Fey, the one who stopped Mean Girls mid-movie to deliver a lecture, and
who recently showed up stumping humorlessly for Hillary Clinton on Saturday
Night Live. Baby
Mama adds a third
Tina Fey to the lineup: The one who gets stuck in a formulaic comedy and tries
to claw her way above the material, almost but not quite making it.
At least she isn't alone. Fey plays
a career woman who develops baby fever late in her 30s. That affliction
eventually leads her to hire a down-market surrogate (Fey's former SNL co-star Amy Poehler) who comes to
live in her posh Philadelphia condo. Odd Couple-inspired awkwardness ensues,
complicated by Fey's tentative romance with the sweet owner of a juice store
(Greg Kinnear, playing a man who hates Jamba Juice with the sort of passion
most people reserve for child molesters) and a difficult relationship with a
New Age boss (an uncredited, and pretty funny, Steve Martin).
It's a beyond-talented cast, with
plenty of other familiar faces popping in for a scene or two, plus a nice
supporting turn from Romany Malco as Fey's over-involved doorman, but Michael
McCullers' script and direction don't give them much room to work. Much of the
movie hinges on characters not revealing information to each other that no sane
person would ever keep a secret; Baby Mama doesn't have a plot so much as a series of
contrivances that play out completely as expected. It's not without
laughs—Poehler and Fey, as ever, have strong chemistry, and there's a
truly bizarre scene in which Martin offers Fey a strange "reward" for a job
well done—but there's a lot of arid space between them.
And the gags aren't the only missing
element. Fey's character wants a baby because—well, we never really know.
She just does, and with no real rooting interest in her quest for motherhood,
it's hard to care whether she ends up with one. Poehler never makes her
character more than the sum of her funniest lines and strangest homemade outfits.
That's not for lack of effort on her part or anyone else's, but it's hard to
get won over by effort alone.