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Baby Mama

Movie Baby Mama Director Michael McCullers Cast Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Greg Kinnear, Dax Shepard, Romany Malco

Tina Fey didn't write Baby Mama, though you'd be forgiven for walking into it and assuming she did. After all, her face appears prominently on the movie's ubiquitous posters, alongside that of co-star and former Saturday Night Live cast mate Amy Poehler. The script actually comes from first-time director Michael McCullers, who previously wrote the second and third Austin Powers movies, but it could have used more of the mean girl. Mommy culture, with its capacity for smugness and solipsism, seems like a ripe topic for parody, but Baby Mama approaches it with kid gloves. The movie certainly has its zingers here and there, and enough laughs scattered throughout to keep it bopping along in entertaining fashion — that is, until its ooey-gooey conclusion in which every conflict works out way too neatly. The strongest moments, though, come from supporting players such as Steve Martin and Sigourney Weaver, despite the comic talents of its exceedingly capable stars. Fey plays Kate Holbrook, the control-freak vice president of a Philadelphia-based organic grocery store chain who finds herself in the position so many women do: Single at 37, after years of focusing on her career, she realizes she's desperate to have a baby. But when her gynecologist informs her that conception would be nearly impossible for her ("I just don't like your uterus," he says), she turns to Poehler's Angie Ostrowiski, an immature, junk food-eating, Red Bull-guzzling surrogate.