Baby Mama

2008, US, directed by Michael McCullers

Yet another movie-on-a-plane, though I must confess quite a pleasurable one: it's silly, unrealistic, and often very amusing, and it boasts a fine set of performers. Tina Fey plays a successful executive who hasn't met the right guy with whom to have children, and embarks instead on a surrogate pregnancy, throwing her together with Saturday Night Live colleague Amy Poehler, one of that show's brightest contemporary lights, as the aforementioned birthing assistant. The film's essentially yet another variation on the old mismatched buddy theme: in this case the slovenly Angie (Poehler) and the micromanaging Kate (Fey), who come to know one another better, etc. What makes the film palatable is the cast: Fey and Poehler are both excellent, but they get strong support from actors as diverse as Sigourney Weaver, Steve Martin, Greg Kinnear, and Romany Malco; Weaver and Martin both nail particular kinds of self-absorbed professional success in very amusing fashion.