Baby Mama: Grade C

C
Baby Mama (2008)
Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Greg Kinnear. With Sigourney Weaver, Maura Tierney, Steve Martin, Romany Malco. Writer-Director Michael McCullers.

Fey is a successful executive who is unable to conceive so she uses Weaver’s agency to hire a surrogate mother (Poehler). Poehler’s character is an uneducated, unemployed goofball living with a loser boyfriend. She and the boyfriend are actually scamming Fey just for the $10K fee, and Poehler must go to ever greater lengths to fake the pregnancy. The jokes keep coming as the two SNL comedy stars play off each other. The wit is linguistic and social observation, based on the fertile topics of fertility, social class, and marriage. There are no sex jokes and nobody walks into a wall. Malco is a standout in a small part as Fey’s apartment doorman. The story is predictable and bland, right up to the sappy ending tied up with a bow. No serious issues are addressed. There are no side-splitters but plenty of yuks to fill a couple of hours with pleasant amusement.