Baby Mama
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of action violence, some sexual content and language.
reviewed by Christopher Lyon
You've got your SNL movies -- comedies starring and/or written by cast members from "Saturday Night Live." Then you've got your chick flicks -- movies that traditionally involve romance, motherhood, strong female relationships, and/or crying. If those two kinds of movies got married, they'd have a "Baby Mama." In other words, it's a movie with likable characters, quotable lines, crude humor, a few really funny scenes, and lots of SNL alums -- and it has babies, a strong female friendship, a little romance, and crying. An SNL chick flick!
The Story
Kate (Tina Fey) is a wildly successful career gal who has it all. She's the VP for a chain of organic food stores. She's got a cool Philadelphia apartment with a chummy doorman and great views. She's got expensive clothes and a nice ride. But she's got no baby. No baby! And she's 37! And she wants a baby now!
So she spends a gazillion dollars on getting sperm from a sperm back, artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, and adoption applications. Nothing works. No baby. Finally, she checks into surrogacy -- having another woman carry a baby with Kate's egg and the sperm-bank sperm. Creepy Chaffee Bicknell (Sigourney Weaver) sells Kate on using her surrogacy agency and sends Angie (Amy Poehler) and her boyfriend Carl (Dax Shepard) to Kate's apartment for an interview.
Angie and Karl come from the other side of the tracks -- poorly edumacated and a little twangy -- but they agree to work with Kate. Shortly after reporting that she is pregnant with Kate's baby, however, Angie breaks up with Karl and moves into Kate's tidy, well-organized apartment. [Cue the "Odd Couple" theme song.] Unexpected complications follow. Will Kate ever get her baby?
The Verdict
What Works: "Baby Mama" is full of likable actors playing likable people. It's an easy movie to hang out and chuckle with, even if you never quite bust a gut. I'm a fan of Tina Fey and her zany, neurotic, buttoned-down characters. She and Amy Poehler have great chemistry as a comedy duo -- especially playing against each other. Steve Martin as Kate's New Agey boss; Greg Kinnear as the middle-aged love interest; Romany Malco as Oscar, the doorman -- all comfy, cozy, kooky characters.
The film is well-written with some good jokes and directed with enough room in the script for the actors to play around a little. It's not outrageous comedy (like some recent Judd Apatow films), but the story is never in danger of being normal, either. It lives right in the safety zone of a funnier-than-average personality-based TV sitcom.
What Doesn't Work: Other than seeing these actors playing the parts, you've seen all of this before in other films about babies and career gals and odd couples. Yes, the story takes an unexpected turn or two, but never unexpected enough to shake the sensation that you know what's coming.
Also, the film's ending made the whole story much less interesting to me. After spending so much time forcing these characters to wrestle with the normalcy and awkwardness of surrogate mommyhood -- it undermines all of that in the last act. It cops out on all the trickiest parts of its worldview choices. (More on that in Worldview.)
Content: "Baby Mama" lands a PG-13 rating for lots of frank, open, and crude talk about the biological components of making babies, as well as some swearing (including the use of God's name).
Worldview
"Baby Mama" exists in a universe where none of the characters seem to base any of their decisions on the possibility that God exists or cares about how we live. The morality of choices involving sex, marriage, and having children appears to be a non-issue for everyone involved.
Angie and Carl have lived together long enough to have a common-law marriage. Kate also lived with a boyfriend for several years. Angie comments that she's good at getting pregnant, though she has no kids. Apparently, she's had more than one abortion that she's not afraid to mention? Nobody ever questions whether its a good idea for a woman to become a single mom on purpose -- without plans for a husband or father, necessarily. And nobody questions the idea of Kate creating probably dozens of fertilized eggs in the course of her fertility treatments, knowing that many of them will either be lost or frozen indefinitely.
And the only reason anyone ever questions the idea of surrogacy is because it feels weird to people. It's not a normal thing.
In short, the worldview of "Baby Mama" is that right and wrong are arbitrary concepts when it comes to marriage, sex, and having kids. It's not even that "we all have different views on these issues," it's that "none of us even wonder about it." Everyone just does what feels okay.
Of course, an SNL chick flick that worried about the morality of sex outside of marriage and various fertility techniques and abortion and intentional single parenthood wouldn't be much fun. And to make sure all of those things remain non-issues, the story cops out in the last act and changes all the rules to avoid any icky consequences and create some very traditional family units.
By comparison, Christians in the real world trying to follow God's direction in these areas seem more and more uptight. But we're not trying to sell tickets, so that's okay. We're convinced not just that God cares how we live -- but also that He gives us direction in the areas of sex, marriage, and kids to make our lives work better. Stats seem to back that up; monogamous married people report the most satisfying sex; people who don't live together before marriage are more likely to stay married; kids with two parents thrive in a lot of important ways.
We can do what seems best to us -- or we can trust God's wisdom to provide the best possible life on this and the other side of heaven. "He who trusts in himself is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom is kept safe." (Proverbs 28:26)
Questions
- Did you dig the "Baby Mama"? Did you think it looked more like it's SNL parent or its chick flick parent? (Yeah, I'm not sure what that means, either.)
- Are you a fan of Tina Fey and/or her hit NBC show "30 Rock"? How many "30 Rock" actors did you catch in the film?
- How do you feel about the idea of surrogate mommydom? Do you know anyone who has ever done this?
- Is it weirder that movies like this never seem to wonder about the morality of character's choices or the existence of God -- or would it be weirder if they did worry about those things?
- Does it make more sense to you to follow God's wisdom and direction in these kinds of choices -- or to not think too much about it and just do what seems okay?
- Did you think the movie copped out in the end to go for the feel-good finish?