Baby Mama, DVD Review

Kate (Tina Fey) is a 37 year old career woman. Up until now she’s taken her career over her personal life, and done very well at it, but her biological clock isn’t just ticking anymore, it’s Big Ben New Years Eve midnight bonging!

Trying to find a man at short notice hasn’t gone well. They don’t tend to like it when babies are the topic of conversation on a first date. IVF with sperm donors hasn’t been successful either, in fact Tina has tried almost everything and is eventually told that, due to a T-shaped uterus, she has a one in a million chance of conceiving herself.

The timing isn’t that bad though, Chaffee Bicknell (Sigourney Weaver) has a surrogate agency that’s just starting to come into its own. The price is a bit steep at $100,000 a pop, but Kate is desperate. The next stage is then finding a surrogate mother willing to carry her baby. Kate has an interview with Angie (Amy Poehler), who turns out to be an ignorant, obnoxious, white-trash girl, with an even dumber boyfriend. Not ideal, but she’s willing to carry Kate’s baby. Did I mention that she’s desperate?

Initially all seems to be going well. Three of Kate’s eggs, fertilized with donor sperm, are implanted into Angie and low and behold, she becomes pregnant. Normally the surrogate Mum would carry on with her life and then at term hand the baby over to the biological mother. In this case, things go a bit awry when Angie finds out her boyfriend is cheating on her and decides to leave him. With nowhere else to go she turns up on Kate’s doorstep to move in for the duration. This is not a good mix, educated, driven career woman with ignorant, lazy white-trash. There may be trouble ahead!

Many of us in the UK may not recognize Tina Fey. This is her first time headlining a film, but she does have some cinematic experience behind her. The eagle eyed teen chick flick fans amongst you may recognize her from Mean Girls. The American TV comedy watchers may also recognize both her and Amy Poehler from Saturday Night Live. In both films I’ve seen her in (the aforementioned Mean Girls and now Baby Mama) Tina does an excellent job at portraying a very natural, easy going character. She doesn’t go over the top, she doesn’t ham it up, her characters seem like nice, real people. To make an interesting film of it though Angie needed to be the opposite, crash, thick and annoying and at that Amy Poehler also does an excellent job. Almost too excellent though, I found her character just a little too annoying in the first half of the film, although it does get better as her character develops and grows with exposure to Kate.

Other noticeable performances come from Greg Kinnear, who also plays an excellent understated, but very natural character, and Steve Martin as Kate’s kooky boss. For Steve Martin it was a relatively small part, but for me his best performance in ages. Prone to going a bit over the top, his performance was, for him, understated, yet conveyed the right amount of strangeness (you’ll just have to watch it to see what I mean).

The title may lead you to believe we’re firmly in chick flick territory here and you’d be dead right! A year ago this would probably have been a title that I’d have steered well clear of, what with all the baby talk and all, but the arrival of a baby girl in my life means that I’m all loved up babywise! The comedy isn’t fast paced and it won’t have you rolling in the isles, but the interaction between Fey and Poehler is excellent and probably benefitted from their previous work together on Saturday Night Live. The plot may be a bit on the predictable side, but it’s still a nice ride. As feel good, chick flick rom coms with lots of baby talk go, you could do much worse than pop this in your DVD player.

Picture is crisp and clean, sound is a tad limited due to the source material. If you’ve got surround sound it certainly won’t get a good workout here, although the dialogue through the center channel is nice and clear which is all it really needs. Extras are a bit thin on the ground with this DVD release in that there are some deleted scenes, one of which would have been a worthy inclusion in the film (the breast pump scene), and that’s about it.

I hope Tina and Amy get more chances to team up together on the big screen. Their first attempt is a warm and fuzzy chick flick with an all star cast and the right amount of feel good factor.

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