Baby Mama

While Tina Fey and Amy Poehler have the makings of a funny screen duo, this movie wastes their talents. Fey plays a single woman who wants a baby but can’t have one. She’s got big bucks, so she pays a surrogate (Poehler) to carry her child. Poehler moves in with Fey, and hilarity is supposed to ensue, but it doesn’t. Some of the humor is jarringly bad (I hated a sequence involving “Endless Love”) and beneath their talent. Small supporting performances from Greg Kinnear and an unbilled Steve Martin are OK, and the leads are likeable. It’s just that the material isn’t up to snuff. Fey usually writes material she’s involved in, and her touch is missing from this movie. It’s just a series of pregnancy jokes that we’ve all heard before. Poehler can be very funny with good material, but quite grating when the material is sub-par. Needless to say, she’s grating this time out.