How is it possible to get Sigourney Weaver(the Alien series, the upcoming Avatar) to put in a bad performance? The answer: put her in the movie Baby Mama, an allegedly hilarious take on what happens when a modern unmarried businesswoman decides to have a baby but can't, and chooses to hire an unkempt and couthless surrogate mother to birth for her.

     Tina Fey(Saturday Night Live, 30 Rock) plays Kate Holbrook, a recently promoted vice-president at the Round Earth Company, an environmentally friendly business which deals primarily in health foods. Suddenly realizing her biolog-ical clock is ticking, Kate wants to get pregnant, only to be told by a fertility specialist played by John Hodgman(The Flight of the Conchords, those incessantly annoying Apple computer commercials) that her uterus doesn't look good, and her odds of conceiving are about 1 in a million. Seeking options other than adoption, Kate finally chooses to go to see Chaffee Bicknell(Weaver), who runs a surrogate agency with supposedly high-end screening techniques. What arrives at Kate's door is Angie(fellow SNL pal Amy Poehler), an uncouth dimwit, with her trailer-trash common law husband Carl(The Comebacks' Dax Shepard) in tow. While most comedy--especially the buddy type--relies on two people being complete opposites trapped in circumstances neither can readily escape without the help of the other, Baby Mama tends to stretch credibility to its breaking point in regards to whether Kate would really want someone like Angie carrying her child for nine months.

     We'll let that one go though, and focus on the fact that while Baby Mama is suitably cast with likeable actors such as Greg Kinnear(As Good As It Gets, Feast of Love) as Kate's eventual and inevitable love interest, Romany Malco(Blades of Glory, the upcoming The Love Guru) as Kate's streetwise (because every Black person on Earth is streetwise) doorman and Steve Martin(The Pink Panther, Shopgirl) as Kate's loopy boss, the movie is just not that funny.

     Martin's role of Barry is nothing more than a knockoff of Seinfeld's J. Peterman taken to a slight elevation of silliness.
Kinnear's Rob mentions on more than one occasion that he has a twelve year-old daughter he wants Kate to meet, but we never get to see her. Sigourney Weaver seems to be trying far too hard to match the comedic level of Fey and Poehler, who give off so little chemistry that if one wasn't familiar with the fact they co-hosted SNL's Weekend News for so long, you'd think this was the first time they'd ever acted together(which in turn means that Weaver displays absolutely none of the comedic prowess she displayed in films such as Galaxy Quest or Working Girl). And while it's a decidedly good thing to be environmentally friendly, the movie knocks one over the head with it so much that you might be tempted to go buy a gross ton of styrofoam and just dump it in the middle of Central Park.

     There are some funny moments within Baby Mama, but that's all they are: moments. They don't add up to a cohesive whole, and for some odd reason this must be the weekend of predictable films. Like the thriller Deception, Baby Mama (likewise helmed by a first-time director, Michael McCullers) makes for one serious sleep aid due to its utter predictability, a pace which limps along miserably, and an ending which even folks who've been blind all their lives will see coming.

     This may very well qualify as the shortest review I've ever written on this site, but really, there's just no reason to go on. And there's no reason for you to waste your hard-earned cash on this film, unless you have one hell of a masochistic streak in you. The one question(other than Rob's M.I.A. daughter) that Baby Mama doesn't answer: why in the world did anyone think for one second this story was funny?
 
 
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The little movie that couldn't
       Baby Mama: A half-baked attempt at comedic storytelling that never fully hatches...
Baby Mama: Proof that Tina Fey's presence can't make every-thing funny. Keep these eggs in the freezer.
"No, really...I'm looking at the script notes, and there's nothing funny in here!"
"Yes, that's right...I signed on with these two. Goodbye, credibility!"