Baby Mama

Hi Aki,

Tonight we watched Baby Mama a comedy (semi-romantic comedy) that came out last year, starring two women stars of Saturday Night Live.

Kate (Tina Fey) is a successful vice president of a natural food grocery chain, given the biggest assignment of her career, to open up the biggest, best ‘Round Earth’ healthy food store in Philadelphia, where the chain first started. But unknown to all her colleagues, Kate has a secret longing: she has always wanted to have a child. And now at age 37 the urge has completely taken over her mind.

She tries everything. Nothing works. Her specialist tells her she has no better than a one in a million chance of getting pregnant herself. As a single woman, she will have to wait for years on lists before any institution will consider allowing her to adopt a child.

At last she signs up with a clinic which, for a $100,000 fee, will oversee impregnating a surrogate with Kate’s egg, fertilized from artificial insemination from a sperm bank.

All that is left is to find the woman who will be the surrogate, and even this is hard: the surrogates, in short supply, get to choose which infertile women whose eggs they will carry. And as a result Kate ends up teamed with Angie (Amy Poehler) who is in every way opposite to Kate (surprise surprise!) – she loves junk food, never graduated from high school, and is a total loser in life … except she gets pregnant really, really easily. In addition Angie is living with a total yahoo jerk of a boyfriend, who put her up to ‘the baby business’ in the first place.

Well, Angie gets pregnant all right, but then the trouble starts. Angie has a fight with her boyfriend and moves in with Kate. Kate is totally possessive and demanding, and wants to control everything Angie eats, what music she listens to, everything she does while pregnant. The ‘odd couple’ pairing is set up for lots of gags and laughs.

But there’s a twist or two along the way – of course! This is Hollywood! In the first place Kate meets a guy she likes (Greg Kinnear, who has made a career out of this kind of part). But the big twist is that Angie isn’t pregnant after all. She failed to get pregnant, but she and her boyfriend figured they would go on collecting checks from Kate for 9 months, then escape with the money. And the boyfriend keeps turning up, demanding that Angie come back to him or he will tell Kate that Angie is lying to her.

Over and over, Angie makes up her mind to tell Kate. But every time she tries … she can’t do it. Finally she is undergoing ultrasound, when the truth must come out, she tries really hard to tell the truth – and finds out the ultrasound checks out. She is pregnant after all. But, it’s with the boyfriend’s baby, not Kate’s.

So there is another lie, another secret that Angie hides. But in the baby shower, it all comes out when her boyfriend bursts in. Kate learns Angie has been lying; boyfriend learns that he will be a father (again, I guess, unless Angie has been having abortions … which might be true); and Kate on her part tells Angie that as part of the process, the pregnancy test might have given a false negative – the baby might still be Kate’s. Meantime Kate’s boyfriend hears about this for the first time, and Kate breaks up with him.

Months pass, and at a court hearing, Kate and Angie meet for the first time to learn the official DNA tests. It isn’t Kate’s baby. Awwwww… Kate is disappointed. But out on the street Angie goes into labor, and Kate takes her to the hospital, and attends the labor, and faints.

And in the morning Kate is told she is pregnant! Hurray!

An epilogue shows the party for Angie’s kid’s first birthday. Kate is there with her baby and boyfriend/fiancé, Angie’s boyfriend is there, still a jerk … most of the cast is there, all one big happy family while the credits roll.

I laughed at several points in the movie. There were good gags. Not a waste of time. But, to apply your test: $8 ticket worthy? $2 ticket worthy? Worthy to watch on TV for $0? Hmmm.

This movie of course is pitched at women, not me. I’m not the audience for it, except maybe for boyfriends and dates the women drag in with them. So, I would say in that regard, it is worth it. I mean, if my girlfriend or wife says, ‘We have to see this movie!’ I will go with her, and I won’t feel that I wasted my time.

The biggest annoyance here was the use of montage. Honest, there must be 10 montage sequences in this sucker. That is about 10 too many! It’s as if the writers and director (credit is given to one guy as writer and director, but I’m sure Tina Fey and Amy Poehler contributed gags, and Fey had her whole TV show writing crew on set with her every day) don’t know how to make a scene. All they know how to do is come up with gags. So the montage sequence lets them throw up a whole bunch of gags. One or two will get a chuckle, at least, then move on.

I think there should be a movie rule: No more than one montage sequence in any movie. And, zero is better than one!

Another thing that struck me is how awkward it is to film on location. They chose Philadelphia as the location and, since this is not Los Angeles or New York, they had to insert local flavor references and shots. Even though they didn’t advance the story or have anything to do with the story. So we have scenes shot out on location that aren’t conducive to good performances, good sound, and that just plain distract us in the audience from what is going on.

Finally, there is just one little other thing. This is a common complaint of Hollywood movies. Kate is a ‘successful career woman.’ Fine, but does she have to be a bloody millionairess to be called successful? I mean, as soon as she agrees she will pay $100,000 to a service just to have a baby, she puts herself outside the category of almost every other woman on Earth!

People have real problems out there. Like having a job, any job. Like getting enough food to eat. Like getting an operation or medication to stay alive. Seriously, $100,000 to buy a baby? What kind of world do these Hollywood writers and executives live in, anyway? Why the hell do they have to blow everything up to such absurd levels? And then they try to pass Kate off as just Everywoman with a fertility problem?

Okay, I know I said ‘finally’ up there, but there’s another thing. The whole ending. This movie is about surrogacy. Only it ends up not being about surrogacy at all. Angie doesn’t carry Kate’s baby, and Kate ends up getting pregnant anyway! COME ON!!! Maybe this is the most annoying part. None of the whole plot was necessary. A deus ex machina reached down out of screenwriting Heaven and gave Kate her own baby with a cute guy who is going to marry her anyway!

I know you like the stories to end with everybody getting what they deserve. But this is just too much. This is giving everybody what they want. Moral of the story: you can do everything and have everything.

You don’t have to live in reality when you’re in a Hollywood movie.

(8 April 2009)