“Baby Mama” is an astute choice

Published April 25th, 2008

By Skip Sheffield
STAFF WRITER

Opening wide today, "Baby Mama" was the opening night film for Tribeca
Film Festival, running through May 4 in Manhattan.

Festival founder Robert Di Niro and stars Tiny Fey and Amy Poehler attended the gala Wednesday at the Ziegfeld Theatre. The film has several New York connections, as it was filmed in Brooklyn (standing in for Philadelphia) and both stars live and work in Manhattan for Saturday Night Live and producer Lorne Michaels.

I saw "Baby Mama" at City Place last Tuesday and enjoyed it thoroughly,
even though I am a guy."Baby Mama" is a female buddy picture first, with equal opportunity laughs.

Fey is Kate Holbrook, a successful 37-year-old executive who has put career before motherhood. Now she and her husband Rob (Greg Kinnear) want to have a child, but it appears maybe it is too late for Kate.

Adoption takes forever and Kate wants her husband's DNA, so she turns to Chaffee Bicknell (Sigourney Weaver), the supremely confident head of a surrogacy center.

Chaffee offers an assortment of potential baby carriers, and after several misfires, Kate settles on Angie Ostrowiski (Amy Poehler). Angie is strong, bright and attractive, but she is saddled with an idiot boyfriend Carl (Dax Shepard), a tough blue collar background and little ambition.

When Chaffee Bicknell tells Kate Angie is indeed pregnant, Kate goes into full mama mode and full comic regalia.

There are complications, or this wouldn't be a situation comedy. One situation is that Carl becomes abusive, Angie shows up at Kate's doorstep, and the women soon learn their forced relationship has quite a few obstacles.

Providing comic relief as Kate's space-cadet boss is Steve Martin, decked out with shoulder-length ponytail and beatific grin as extreme greenie entrepreneur, Barry.
Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are buddies in real life, so it's not a big stretch to transfer their affection to the screen. The acting comes in the scenes of conflict in which Kate's smug superiority and Angie’s stubborn pride are revealed.

It is fun seeing brainy Tina Fey displaying her sexy side and girl pride in a great body, nice legs and a come-hither smile. Poehler's giddy, slapstick Costello is foil to Fey's stern Abbott, relishing junk food, trashy styles and trashy talk.

Greg Kinnear is making a career of playing good-looking good guys, and he wears Rob like a comfortable shoe.

Old-fashioned yet contemporary (a first directorial effort by SNL writer Michael McCullers), "Baby Mama" is an astute choice that salutes a post-9/11 renaissance in New York that has been blooming since Tribeca Film Festival was founded in the despair of 2002.