'Odd couple' flick misses the mark with 'Baby Mama'

THEY ONCE MADE romantic comedies about boy meets girl. "Baby Mama" is a romantic comedy about how a work-obsessed career woman who fears her clock has ticked out meets a surrogate mother.

"Baby Mama" is highly predictable. While weak on the plot level, it gets by largely on the newness, and occasional freshness, of Tina Fey, the "Saturday Night Live" former head writer. She plays a 37-year-old working woman of utter naivete, doing an always "nice" imitation of Mary Tyler Moore. This is the kind of woman who, woefully, comments: "Some women get pregnant. I get promotions."

She is aided, but surely not matched, by her "SNL" "Weekend Update" co-star Amy Poehler, who plays the crude, rather "common," woman who contracts to have a baby for her - for a price. The movie is best when it's about class differences rather than about babies.

This is a girls' night out movie to contrast the Judd Apatow gentle gross-out comedies ("Knocked Up," "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," etc.) that are dominating the other multiplex theaters. It is mostly just an "Odd Couple" comedy for girls.

Fey and Poehler are attempting to cross over from the once-clever TV sketch show to movie stardom, even though the historical odds are against it. While many male comic movie stars have come from "SNL," only Gilda Radner came close on the female side. Who can name the movies that starred Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman or Julia Sweeney?

This summer, alone, will feature movies starring male alumni Eddie Murphy, Will Ferrell, Mike Myers and Adam Sandler.

Still, if any female comic can make the transition presently, it is Fey. She was the first female head writer for "SNL" and, since leaving two years ago, has won Emmys, Golden Globes and other awards for writing and acting in her TV series "30 Rock."

She did not write "Baby Mama," which is a surprise because the movie so persistently stars her, not co-star Poeler. Tina rules. Amy gets to tag along.

The lack of development for Poehler's role is one of the faults in this uneven but pleasant comedy. Everything is centered on the control freak played by Fey. That leaves Poehler to merely be the crude opposite who is more plot device than a real character.

Poehler does gross things like stick chewing gum under Fey's coffee table and point out that organic foods are "only for rich people who don't like themselves." If an "Odd Couple" comedy was the plan here, we need a couple, not a solo. It doesn't help, either, that the blonde surrogate mother looks older than the infertile workaholic who is doing the worrying about the clock ticking.

The supporting cast is fine, although under used. Sigourney Weaver plays the head of a baby factory that charges $100,000 for arranging things, but the persistent joke is that, in her own life, she has babies galore. Weaver could have been one of our classiest comediennes if she just hadn't run into those "Aliens" early in her career.

Steve Martin has a funny bit as the head of an organic food organization who acts like a flower child left over from yesteryear. As a kind of New Age guru with a gray pony tail, he rewards acquaintances with five minutes of eye-to-eye contact.

Greg Kinnear, still holding onto his boyish look, has a nothing role as the juice-bar operator who becomes Fey's date, but he manages to add a bit of humanity to it.

First-time director Michael McCullers also wrote the script and shows that he is better at writing than directing and, in turn, better at writing dialogue than plot.

"Baby Mama" is a trifle that passes in the night. It is Tina Fey's warm humanity and her huge brown eyes that largely hold it together.

In the midst of a lot of pretty ordinary gags, we actually care about whether she's going to be able to be happy - and motherly. Given better scripts, which she may have to write herself, she could become the female "SNL" alumni to finally become a real movie star.

Mal Vincent, (757) 446-2347, mal.vincent@pilotonline.com.