Baby Mama, the feature film directorial debut of former SNL writer Michael McCullers, is an uneven freshman film.
The film is the story of Kate Holbrook (Tina Fey), a 37-year-old career woman who, despite her recent promotion to a vice presidency position in her company, isn't completely happy. As the film reveals in a very frank manner, Kate is a woman who has worked her butt off to be successful, while the women around her were having children. Kate is the type of woman that society labels as a bitch because her career comes first in her life. This has left her unmarried and without children, and with the realization that her biological clock is about to stop ticking, her mothering instinct has finally emerged.
Kate doesn't want to adopt. It's not guaranteed to happen, and it takes a long time for a single parent to receive a child. In this reality lies the satire that makes this romantic comedy respectable. Mama is, for all its fluff, a provocative look at the industry that pregnancy has become.
With no social life, Kate has no potential husband in sight. For an easy fix, she ventures to a local sperm clinic, where advanced computer imaging morphs her baby picture with those of prospective sperm donors to find the most desirable-looking offspring. With many failed implantations, Kate turns to a surrogate company, where she enlists Angie Ostrowiski (Amy Poehler) to bear her child. So, it's not just products like books that Kate selects to name her child or gifts that she receives at her baby shower that are profiting from expecting parents - it's science, something that is costly and imperfect.
These controversies are examined on a deeper level than just this surface. Angie turns out to be a lowlife who, along with the aid of her husband, fakes a successful egg implantation to cash a $100,000 check. She's using the industry that is profiting off hopeful parents to cash in. The story bluntly explores class, with many poor women having children for those who cannot as a form of career. The process, after all, costs as much as a house.
What ultimately hurts this film is the decision to end in the ultimate romantic comedy cliche - the happy ending. Just as the film presents itself with the opportunity to end in a provocative manner, it rewrites itself, with a finish that is predictably drab. When the scam is revealed to Kate, she and Angie end up in court. Kate's love interest, whom she has severed ties with due to his distaste of surrogacy, turns out to be a retired lawyer representing Angie. On the way out of court, Kate runs into Angie, whose water breaks, and everyone ends up in the hospital together.
Despite its flaws, however, the film remains brilliant for one reason: Tina Fey, who has earned the title of the screen's new "it" comedienne with her pitch-perfect delivery.
Fey aside, the rest of the cast also proved delightful. Although armed with throwaway roles, aging actors Steve Martin and Sigourney Weaver struck comedic gold. The one question: Amy Poehler. Poehler, for all her audacity, is the male Will Ferrell - not perfectly rounded, with some larger-than-life tendencies as the result of sketch-comedy work, but an utter joy. She was a generation too old to be playing her role, but she brought a great delicateness too.
Perfect? Not quite. But what mother is? B+
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