Baby Mama in a nutshell? Successful single sophisticate Tina Fey hires white trash loser Amy Poehler to be the surrogate mother of her child. Now that’s what we call high concept.
Of course, you couldn’t get a feature length film out of such odd couple shenanigans if Fey and Poehler weren’t, as the increasingly pervy Vanity Fair had it recently, two of the World’s Funniest Women. Scratch that. The Saturday Night Live graduates are simply two of the planet’s funniest people. Period.
Ms. Poehler, playing Baby Mama’s gum-chewing sponger with a secret, puts in a fearless physical performance. Having previously proven her worth as a clown in such contemporary delights as Blades Of Glory, here no pose is too undignified, no facial expression is too contorted. Ms. Fey, meanwhile, the ridiculously clever screenwriter behind our favourite noughties teen flick, Mean Girls, is a perfect, anally retentive foil for her comic partner’s slobbery.
So forget the ‘bromance’ of the Apatow milieu. This is twice as funny and five times as clever as Knocked Up. Let’s hear it for the girls.