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The Main Characters
--Kate Holbrook (Tina Fey) is an older business woman who is feeling the baby blues. The only problem is, she can’t get pregnant. Enter…
--Angie Ostrowiski (Amy Poehler) is the surrogate that Kate picks out. She’s definitely white trash but she’s willing to carry the baby for the money.
The Setting
This takes place in and around Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, though the setting doesn’t play a big role in the film.
The Film (1:38:54)
It’s a pretty simple premise: we have an older, successful woman who wants kids. She’s single (since she’s so focused on her job) so she goes to a sperm bank. When she learns she can’t get pregnant she gets a surrogate from a reputable surrogate company. The woman she gets, Angie, is the epitome of white trash and it seems that she and her boyfriend are only doing this for the money. Of course, Angie ends up leaving her man and stays with Kate for the duration of the pregnancy. This leads to a couple of twists and turns that will change both characters and their relationship to each other.
Movie Review
My wife picked this up on Black Friday because she’s a fan of Tina Fey and wanted to see if this was any good. We heard it was. Unfortunately, we heard wrong. The movie was billed as a comedy but it just wasn’t funny. A lot of the comedic moments just fell flat and everything seemed way too contrived to be funny. The twists towards the end of Act Two led to really predictable plot points and it just seemed like the movie was trying to do too much. Steve Martin, Sigourney Weaver and Greg Kinnear were wasted in their roles and none of them really had their moment to shine comedically. This movie had its moments but for the 100 minute run-time it felt just way too long.
DVD Features
A) Extras
This is a double-sided disc so the extras are split between the A and B side. The commentary is repeated on both, the first three extras are on Side A and the making of is the only B-side extra.
1) Alternate Ending (2:31)
The alternate ending sees Kate visiting Angie who just gave birth. Kate also gets a call saying that she’s eligible to adopt a child. We fast-forward to Kate with her 13-year-old step-daughter, her adopted child and her newborn. This didn’t really do anything for the film and it was better it was axed.
2) Deleted Scenes (6:38)
There’s a couple of scenes here, including using a breast pump with Kate and Angie leaving when the teacher starts breast-feeding her teenage son. Kate walks into her apartment and the doorman tells her that he hopes she isn’t pregnant. Angie chucks a trashcan onto the car and it breaks the window. We the ex come back and it wasn’t even his car. Oh the laughs. Angie finds a dealer to try and beat a pea-test to show she’s pregnant. Angie’s boyfriend is accused of fraud for ordering some bad things. Finally, Kate wonders why she was double-crossed by Angie and her friend tells her she shouldn’t shun a pregnant Angie.
3) Saturday Night Live: Legacy of Laughter (3:18)
This is brought to us by Volkswagen. The Legacy of Laughter deals with only Amy and Tina and it doesn’t really mention SNL at all, except in passing. I don’t know what point this served, actually.
4) Feature Commentary
The commentary was recorded by Michael McCullers (writer/director), Lorne Michaels (producer) as well as stars Tina Fey & Amy Poehler. Tina’s funny, saying that scenes she’s in with men that don’t talk are former lovers of her. Richard Gere was offered the role that Steve Martin played. The Endless Love segment led to jokes of them being lesbians. They talk about filming, and even though its setting was Philly, a lot of shooting was in Brooklyn. This was a surprisingly decent commentary, considering how much I disliked the film. Amy and Tina are funny and it was blast listening to them. Lorne was quiet pretty much the whole time.
5) From Conception to Delivery: The Making of Baby Mama (10:07)
It started as a simple idea: Amy having Tina’s baby. Tina compares them to a Laverne & Shirley type comedy. Greg Kinnear even calls it a female Odd Couple. There’s discussion on Steve Martin, Greg Kinnear, Sigourney Weaver and Dax Shepherd. Dax is totally a bumpkin and he was pretty funny, saying he wouldn’t work with Sigourney because she has a tendency to get attacked by aliens and he doesn’t need that. This was definitely the best extra so far.
B) Audio/Video
The movie is presented in both Widescreen and Fullscreen. I watched the Widescreen (1.85:1) and everything looked fine. It was presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 but really for a movie that focuses on dialogue there’s not much you can do with it.
C) Packaging / Liner Notes
As with most DVD’s now it’s just the case, the cover, the back and nothing else.
D) Easter Eggs
None
Overall Review
We start off with some previews; 30 Rock on DVD, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Scorpion King 2 (which is actually a prequel) and these three total 3:14. Side Two opens with another set of extras totaling 2:25 (Leatherheads, Miss Pettigrew Live For a Day and Mostly Ghostly (by RL Stine). It’s worth repeating that I was not a fan of this movie. This is one of those, “all the funny bits are in the previews,” type movies with little surrounding those few scenes to make this an entertaining watch. The second time I watched it while listening to the commentary somehow made the film even more unbearable, as the things I thought were funny the first time weren’t as funny anymore. I think this falls under the category of most SNL films, sure they can be funny in 2-3 minute spots but when you add another 90 minutes to that it gets way too stretched out and the comedy wears thin. As a DVD it failed to hit the mark, too. I was definitely expecting something different from the SNL feature and the only extra on here that was worth anything was the commentary. If they could’ve harnessed what Amy and Tina did in the commentary you would have a funny movie, but they didn’t and this just misses the mark.
Overall Rating
4.0
10.0 Perfect
9.0-9.5 Near Perfect, Highly Recommended
8.0-8.5 Really good disc, Recommended
7.0-7.5 Good DVD, Mildly recommended
6.0-6.5 Above Average DVD. Mildest of mild recommendations
5.0-5.5 Decent all around disc, but catch it on TV
4.0-4.5 Great Movie but horrible DVD
3.0-3.5 Horrible movie but great DVD
2.0-2.5 There’s at least some merit to this DVD, but not much.
1.0-1.5 Horrible DVD, don’t even bother
0.0-0.5 Worst DVD ever
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