Two and 1/2 stars
"Baby Mama" stars Tina Fey as Kate Holbrook, a 37-year-old, single, successful career woman who one day awakens to the sudden realization that her biological clock is ticking away and her maternal instincts are no longer willing to be suppressed.
Unfortunately, Kate has been blessed with a "T"-shaped uterus that makes her chances of getting pregnant one in a million.
Kate didn't arrive at the vice presidency of a nationally known chain of health food stores by taking "no" for an answer. She begins to look at her options, the best of which is in vitro fertilization courtesy of a surrogate mother.
Enter Angie Ostrowski (Amy Poehler), the surrogate who is provided to Kate for a mere $100,000. Simply put, Angie is everything Kate is not.
Angie is a gum-chewing, bleached-blonde personification of white trash, complete with a knuckle-dragging lout of a boyfriend (Dax Shepard) and a bizarre sense of fashion.
Angie picked up both when she "discontinued" high school and gave into her addiction to Dr. Pepper and chocolate TastyKakes.
Kate swallows her pride because Angie does have what Kate doesn't -- a functional uterus. So a contract is drawn up and a tentative relationship begins.
When Angie, not surprisingly, breaks up with Carl, Kate is forced to take her into her upper-crust Philadelphia apartment so as to protect the pregnancy of her unborn child. It's at this point that a true clash of cultures and personalities gets under way.
It's also at this point when "Baby Mama" is at its best, because Fey and Poehler have such good chemistry with each other when they're together. No doubt it's a bond that was forged during their time together on the "Saturday Night Live Weekend Update" anchor desk.
Fey's wry, intelligent and self-knowing persona translates into a performance that works in tandem with Poehler's manic energy and ditzy wackiness. Yet at the same time, Fey presents a woman who is a bit more than the typical icy executive, while Poehler suggests a woman who isn't as dumb as much as she is just immature.
But likeable as they may be, Fey and Poehler's comic talents aren't quite enough to carry "Baby Mama." The film tends to generate smiles more than out-and-out laughs.
Where "Baby Mama" seems to come up short is that its comic sensibilities sort of straddle the fence. While the film's neither raunchy nor edgy in its humor (which can be a good thing), its content tends to be somewhat formulaic and predictable (which is a bit disappointing).
The characters in this film are all stereotypes or caricatures. Despite the entertaining aspects of Fey's and Poehler's performances, for example, their characters remain derivatives of the age-old "Odd Couple" scenario.
And while such stereotypes are made amusing by the actors playing them (none moreso than Steve Martin as a ponytailed executive who's a cross between Donald Trump and Timothy Leary), they are one-dimensional and less than original. "Baby Mama's" story disappoints because it fails to realize its own potential.
Director and scripter Michael McCullers has a viable subject ripe for satirization -- sending up upper-middle-class yuppies trying to be perfect parents raising perfect children -- that he pretty much ignores.
Instead, he's more concerned about a numbing subplot involving Kate in a romance with a manager of a socially responsible fruit juice store (Greg Kinnear). This serves only to help funnel the film to its forced happy ending.
Perhaps the best thing to say about the film is that "Baby Mama" is a comedy that is satisfied with playing things safe. In laboring to be politically correct and blithely inoffensive, it, ironically, gives in to the same state of mind the film wishes to poke fun at.