McCullers influence of having written for SNL during the dark ages when Jimmy Fallon and Chris Kattan were headlining stars shines through in his script.

Look at the list of names in “Baby Mama” and you will find Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Greg Kinnear, Steve Martin and Sigourney Weaver. Judging by this amalgamation of stars in various points of their careers this movie was destined for mediocrity and it still came up short.

Since having a baby is the new black in movie plot lines, the veteran screen writer and first time director Michael McCullers (writer of “Thunderbirds” and “Undercover Brother”) created his own heartwarming story about a woman’s desire fill an empty void in her single working woman’s life by letting another woman go through the pains and trouble of childbirth.

Tina Fey stars as Kate Holbrook, the successful 30-something businesswoman with the hankering to have a child and Amy Poehler is Angie Ostrowiski, a woman who while the complete opposity of Holbrook, is willing to carry the child. Hijinks ensue as Poehler leaves her boyfriend/common-law husband and moves in to Fay’s straight-laced world. The movie becomes predictable from there on, never challenging the viewer and often submitting to the lowest common denominator.

The humor that fans of Fey and Poehler have become used to thanks to “30 Rock” and SNL’s “Weekend Update” gets lost in a movie that thinks that everyone watching must have not graduated elementary school. Fey and Poehler are reduced to recite lines that not even a SNL intern would have written.

I don’t care how strong of a performance one gives when you are force to recite pointless giggly babble. McCullers wrote for SNL during the dark ages when Jimmy Fallon and Chris Kattan were headlining stars, and this influence shines through in his script.

Simple juvenile jokes are used throughout the film and leave the rather skilled acting cast with nothing truly funny to work with. An example of this occurs when Fey’s character and Kinnear, who plays the owner of a local fruit smoothie shop called Super Fruity, discuss the similarity of the smoothie shop’s logo to a penis and the intrinsic gay vibe that the logo and name give off in conjunction.

The only bright spot in the film is the performance of Steve Martin, which is as surprising as it is refreshing. Martin plays the owner of a chain of natural food stores called Round Earth. He’s smug and egotistical in all the right ways. Martin is able to breathe a life into the character that for the brief moment he is on screen always produces a laugh.

The film cultivates in a final scene where all lose ends are tied up in a nice little package that is so sweet and perfect it would even make Rainbow Brite spew a mixture of popcorn, Sprite and Sour Patch Kids in the dimly lit isle of the theater.

> Comments