DVD Reviews

Baby Mama – DVD Review

By Jeff Swindoll Sep 9, 2008, 13:44 GMT

Comedic geniuses Tina Fey (30 Rock, Saturday Night Live) and Amy Poehler (Saturday Night Live) team up to celebrate a modern twist on motherhood! Kate (Fey) is a single, successful career woman who wants something more: a baby. But she gets more than she bargained for when she hires Angie (Poehler), a free spirit from South Philly, to be her surrogate in a hysterical mama match-up. From birth class to ...more

Put our biological alarm clocks on silent if you happen to have a T-shaped uterus. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler take some time off of the Saturday Night Live news desk to star in this comedy that’s knocked up with laughs.

Kate (Tina Fey) is a driven career woman and in charge of opening up the new Round Earth Organic Market (the corporation is run by a pony-tailed Steve Martin, who dishes out guru-like dribble and rewards her with five minutes of uninterrupted eye contact).

However, lately she’s been seeing babies everywhere she goes. Her biological clock is going off like the bells at Notre Dame Cathedral. She goes to see her doctor for a baby-making status update and he says that since she has a T-shaped uterus that she’ll not be able to conceive.

She goes to see Chaffee Bicknell (Sigourney Weaver) who runs a surrogate agency and who can’t seem to NOT get pregnant (at her advanced age – that’s one of the jokes but she’s still pretty hot IMHO). The agency matches Kate with Angie (Amy Poehler) who seems to be everything that Kate is not.

Things get even more complicated when Angie’s common law husband Karl (Dax Shepard) cheats on Angie and she shows up at Kate’s door.

Think the Odd Couple but with babies. Well, babies that are on the way. Baby Mama pairs up the co-anchors of the Saturday Night Live new desk for this funny comedy about the perils of conception or the lack thereof.

Fey plays the uber-organized, uptight Felix but substitutes want of baby for his hypochondria. Poehler plays the sloppy, low-class Oscar. The comedy when these two opposites are brought together is amusing, but it’s the supporting cast where the majority of the laughs come from. Steve Martin is just delightful as the new-age nut job Barry that runs the Round Earth Company with all of his buffoonish platitudes and asides. It reminds you of why Martin is such a comedic genius whenever he’s on the screen, can’t really say the same for the Pink Panther redo.

Greg Kinnear also shows a soft side as the object of Fey’s affection. The two ladies make wonderful foils and the film does have a positive message. The ladies will probably appreciate the film more, but since I’m an old softie I liked the message and the comedy. Set the biological clock to stun.

Baby Mama is presented in both fullscreen and anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1) enhanced for 16x9 televisions on a dual sided disc. The special features are also divvied up by side. The fullscreen side contains the 10 minute “From Conception to Delivery: The Making of Baby Mama.”

The widescreen side has a 2 minute alternate ending, 6 minutes of deleted scenes, and the 3 minute “Saturday Night Live: Legacy of Laughter” which is more about Fey and Poehler than about the show (brought to you by Volkswagen). Both version of the film has a commentary by writer/director Michael McCullers, producer Lorne Michaels, and Poehler and Fey.

The team of Fey and Poehler know how to wring the laughs out of a potentially touchy subject, yet they do. Some fine supporting actors help out immensely. It’s probably one that will get rented for girl’s night out, but I thought the film was rather touching as well as being funny.