It would be a lie to state that our main priority nowadays
is anything else but our career.
We see this tendency manifesting mostly among the young;
it’s easy to observe twenty-something people in the morning, detached from the real
world, focused only on their cup of coffee on their way to work and we see them
late in the evening returning home, same way, same detachment, dreaming
eyes-wide open about their pillow.
It is they who wake up in their late thirties single,
craving desperately for a family. There is no doubt that they are
professionally-accomplished and their job brought them enough satisfaction in
order to forget about the ordinary course of life, but at a certain moment of
time they feel the need to become from professionals something more common,
like parents.
This is the drama depicted humorously by a new comedy that
opens today in theatres, “Baby Mama.” The comedy focuses on a career woman who
feels that her biological clock ceased ticking subtly and it is on the verge of
ringing, announcing that her time is up. Our protagonist, 37-year old Kate
(played by “30 Rock’s” Tina Fey) is determined to approach motherhood, only to
discover, to her great disappointment, that she stands more chances to win the
lottery than to get pregnant.
As she is not interested at all in winning the lottery, Kate
searches for alternatives and finds the solution at a pricey surrogacy center
run by much- too-fertile Chaffee (Sigourney Weaver) in exchange of one hundred
thousand dollars. Given the circumstances and the movie genre, implanting
Kate’s lab-fertilized eggs into a surrogate mother seems more suitable than
adopting, as it implies the blend of medical (professionalism) and biological
(motherhood).
The intrigue of the plot is Kate’s meeting Angie (Amy
Poehler of “Saturday Night Live”). Angie is a brittle blond, coming from the
working-class, whose manners will generate headaches in Kate and laughs in the
audience. Angie’s breakup with her idiot common-law husband (Dax Shepard) brings
the two of them living together in Kate’s classy apartment. To cut the story
short, the vice president at a natural food supermarket chain in
Even though the gap between the two women is large and deep
enough to make us wonder why, if she had already paid that huge sum of money,
Kate didn’t ask for somebody else, Kate and Angie click. Their relationship has
its bumps, like Angie’s eating junk food habits or spending/wasting her time playing
video games, but there are moments when the two really hit it off.
The movie also has an amusement-generator in Kate’s boss,
played by Steve Martin. Sporting a ponytail reminiscent New Age, Barry is a
mixture of eccentricity and egocentrism, drawing bursts of laughs when he
rewards his employees with five whole minutes of gazing into his eyes. Also,
Oscar (Romany Malco of “The 40-Year-Old Virgin”) is the doorman who always
shares pieces of his wisdom with the others. Kate’s love interest is Rob (Greg
Kinnear), the owner of a smoothie shop who is worried that the Whole Foods-like
supermarket chain for which she works will irreversibly change the face of the
neighborhood.
Even though charming, “Baby Mama” will give its audience a
continuous sensation of deja-vu. Elements from “Parenthood” and “Baby Boom” are
spread throughout the comedy, Kate and Angie’s living together is a replica of
“The Odd Couple” and Kate and Rob’s love story is remindful of “You’ve Got
Mail.” The adventures of the two women were written and directed by Michael
McCullers.
“Baby Mama” is a charming story, not exceedingly funny, but amusing enough to leave at least smiles on the faces of moviegoers.