Tina Fey can be my Baby Mama

I'd love to marry a woman as smart, funny and eyeglasses-classy as Tina Fey.

Oh wait, I did.

That's okay. Princess Di completely understands my crush, even mock-cringes when Fey says something sounding like her. She really loves it. Except that time when "Tina" slipped into our pillow talk.

Anyway, there’s no business like “lady business” for Fey, who coined the term in a Saturday Night Live commercial for the Woomba, a robotic feminine hygiene product.

Like much of Fey’s humor, the joke made men blush while women felt as if someone read their minds. Switch the genders and you’d have caveman comedy like Knocked Up and Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Fey is the anti-Judd Apatow, reversing the curse of penis raunch with naughty lady business.

Baby Mama isn’t officially Fey’s idea like her lauded screenplay for Mean Girls or her sitcom 30 Rock. She obviously hijacked Michael McCullers’ movie with SNL’s Amy Poehler as an improvising accomplice. Watching Baby Mama is akin to witnessing gender reclassification, something born of maleness realizing feminine comfort. The transition isn’t easy but the results beat what would have been.

Without a solid female perspective, Baby Mama could simply be The Odd Couple in Lamaze class with cervix jokes and breaking water (as preview trailers suggest). Fey and Poehler polished McCullers’ script into something more substantive with jokes speaking from experience that men can’t know. Now it’s our turn to wonder: “Do they really think like that?”

Fey plays Kate Holbrook, a nervously successful marketer for health food products. She has it all except for maternal bliss but her misshapen uterus prevents pregnancy. Adoption takes too long – Kate is a real go-getter – so employing a surrogate is her best option.

Angie Ostrowiski (Poehler) isn’t a great choice but she’s available, urged into her sixth, maybe seventh, pregnancy-for-pay by a shiftless husband (Dax Shepard). Angie is as irresponsible as Kate is uptight, as co-dependent as Kate is fussily independent. Obviously they can learn a lot from each other, and they will.

The movie also features male characters that aren’t entirely disrespected or blamed for women’s woes. Greg Kinnear is more charming, less self-conscious than usual as Kate’s potential suitor while Shepard’s character, even when abusive, is too stupid to take seriously, which is funny. Fey’s tweaking of the screenplay turns Kate’s boss from a typical office pig into a New Age nimrod, giving Steve Martin an excuse for silliness. (Tina and the wrong "Steve" are at left.)

How two women find common ground among such guys sets Baby Mama apart from other preggo-comedies. The movie looks beyond the bulging belly to hormones and social expectations churning inside. Not all of the jokes work -- some sound like 30 Rock rejects -- and some improvs strain for worthiness. Yet even in slack moments Baby Mama has Fey and Poehler's subversive vibe going for it.

Comments

[jane]

"Do they really think like that?"

Being the Tina Devotee that I am, I can say, even without seeing the movie, that yeah, yeah we do. Subversive vibe and all.

And Princess Di -- you are fab.

[Princess Di]

Thanks, Jane!
I do, indeed, love Tina Fey. What Steve doesn't know is I'm secretly in love with Pete Schwety (aka Alec Baldwin), ha!

[jane]

What a lovely coincidence -- I myself am not so secretly in love with Jack Donaghy, wonk that he is.

[Carrie]

I cannot stand Tina Fey or Amy Poehler. They are too full of themselves and their so-called comedic timing is way off. They try to hard to be funny which makes it sad. This movie will be a huge flop. Saturday Night Live is but a pale shadow of its funny past and as for 30 Rock.... sigh.

[Steve Persall]

Meeeow. Saucer of milk, table 5.

Seriously, Carrie, you're entitled to that opinion and it's as right as anyone's.

But you're talking about the woman I love and, by extension, the woman I married. Which should be the same person but, hey, you know.

Just kidding there.

[Marissa]

Since motherhood usually takes me to movies that are 13 year old boy friendly, this will probably wait until DVD. Howevah, I'm up for some chick slapstick. I often thought Fey and Poehler's obvious 'wait for it ....' sort of glances on SNL worked.