The Alex & The Eleanor + 1

Hey - a movie review. That’s 3 posts in one day for those of you counting. Which makes 3 more posts than in the past 9 or so months. Anyhow, to the film.

A Tina Fey vehicle, written and directed by Michael McCullers (best know for co-writing the Austin Powers films), Baby Mama is a sadly bland film. It manages to place itself in that exactly wrong space between the absurd and the real - leaving a film that isn’t funny enough to not care about any of the characters - or plot.

Speaking of plot, it’s atrocious. Tough career minded woman hits her late 30’s and realizes she wants a baby. After a quick montage of attempts we come to surrogate parenting. Enter the odd couple segment of the film with the crazy redneck surrogate (Amy Pohler) driving Fey crazy. Then of course there’s the romantic love interest (Greg Kinnear), the usual lies and deceptions and non-surprising plot twists, and you’ve got yourself one failure of a film.

Thankfully, there’s a lot of high powered comedy talent in this film, filling roles from top to bottom, and it’s these performances that save it from being awful. Fey is largely a clone of her character from 30 Rock, Liz Lemon, which is all to the good - as that’s one of the funniest characters on television today, and Fey plays it with perfect comic timing. Amy Pohler is a much weaker foil as the redneck surrogate. Although not incompetent, she’s clearly outclassed and it shows. Sigourney Weaver has a highly amusing role as the owner of the surrogate firm, and some of the best moments in the film are between her and Fey. Steve Martin is unfortunately bland as the eccentric boss - we’ve seen this character so many times, and it’s almost always been funnier. Greg Kinnear is surprisingly adept in his role as the love interest given the dearth of material he had to work with.

As far as film making goes, it’s paint by numbers directing. The sets look fairly cheap, the lighting is flat, and the montages are weak.

The really frustrating thing about this film is that it does have flashes of magic, but they come in the little moments between characters and the throw away lines, not in the big jokes. I don’t know if this was improv by the accomplished sketch comedy cast or some flashes of good writing from McCullers; but given that those lines feel like a glimpse into the world of 30 Rock, I’d hazard a guess that they come from Fey and not McCullers.

Do yourself a favor, and just rent season 1 of 30 Rock and watch it instead. And if you’ve already done that and want a Tina Fey fix - do it again.

C+