How do you cast Tina Fey and Amy Poehler in a movie and think you need anything else? That is what I kept asking myself whenever another character or subplot was added to this movie.We have a simple enough premise: Upper class businesswoman, Fey, can't get pregnant, so she hires white trash hillbilly, Poehler, to carry her baby for her. Poehler breaks up with her boyfriend and moves in with Fey. Cue The Odd Couple contrivances, and you have a winning comedy. Well, that's not what you get.
Screenwriters should begin their scripts by first writing the coming attractions preview. The preview for Baby Mama didn't have Steve Martin or Greg Kinnear in it, it had Fey and Poehler. It wasn't a romantic comedy about Fey working her way up in the organic foods industry or hooking up with a single father who runs a juice restaurant. It had Fey and Poehler in Fey's apartment colliding in indifference. That's what you think you're going to get going in; Jokes about a hick trying to figure out how to work a breast pump, or switching out the classical music for some hip-hop. The best this movie can do is have Poehler pee in the sink when she can't figure out how to work the child safety lock on the toilet. And you saw that in the preview.
I'm afraid what we have here is a case of the movie not getting out of its own way. Whether that was due to lack of confidence on the part of the screenwriter and director, Michael McCullers, in not trusting such a straightforward premise, I don't know. I have a feeling it was. I just can't understand why he would want to saddle Fey with such a lame romantic subplot. In fact, I don't understand why Fey didn't want to rewrite the script.
For the first thirty minutes, the film is exactly what it should be: Fey and Poehler in an apartment together. Poehler commits a faux pas, Fey reacts; rinse, repeat. Then Steve Martin shows up as Fey's boss, one of those transcendental meditation yuppies with a ponytail and loose-flowing clothes that you've seen made fun of in a hundred other movies. Then Greg Kinnear shows up playing approximately the same character he played in Feast of Love, except this time it's a juice restaurant and not a coffee diner. And Dax Shepard keeps showing up as Poehler's ex, and he tells the same joke, then leaves.
Maura Tierney shows up as Fey's sister, and she's in, like, one scene, and she's funny, and why the hell couldn't she have been in the movie more?
There are so many subplots and complications that the movie forgets to introduce a character that is mentioned on several occasions: Greg Kinnear's 14 year old daughter. He keeps talking about her and talking about her, but she never shows up. Everyone gets invited to the closing credits montage - even the goddamn doorman - but Greg Kinnear's daughter, that poor lost subplot of a character, gets left on the cutting room floor.
Fey and Poehler are great and talented comedians blessed with improvisational gifts and good looks. They deserve a movie that will leave them alone.
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