Nobody’s Baby

Tina Fey’s stillborn surrogate- mommy comedy

A A A Comments (0) By Robert Wilonsky Wednesday, Apr 23 2008

Fey and Poehler just want to pump you up.

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Could have sworn I’ve seen this episode of Baby Mama before — like sometime in January 2007, when it was originally titled “The Baby Show” and aired on that other prime-time series starring Tina Fey, 30 Rock. (Wait a minute — you say Baby Mama’s a movie and not a TV show? Seriously? Coulda sworn ...) It was funny the first time around when Fey, as late-night-TV exec Liz Lemon, suddenly found herself drawn to the sound of cooing and the scent of baby powder. Baby Mama extends the joke, then softens it, then smothers it in its crib — an unpleasant picture perhaps but not any more disagreeable than the phrase “Produced by Lorne Michaels.” Ultimately, that’s all this shrugging disappointment is: a Saturday Night Live sketch stretched a good hour past the point of no return. It even pairs Fey with her former “Weekend Update” co-anchor Amy Poehler, who shows up as mercenary womb-provider Angie, a character that is really just Amy Poehler barely trying to maintain a hillbilly accent. Ultimately, the movie exists solely to reunite a winning comic duo: two women so singularly in sync that, during their “Weekend Update” stint, they genuinely laughed at each other’s jokes despite their well-rehearsed familiarity come showtime. Kate and Angie are just Tina and Amy goofing around — drunk-dancing, crooning along to video-game karaoke and, once more, finishing each other’s sentences. (Citywide)—Robert Wilonsky