On the Big Board |
| Position |
Staff |
In Brief |
| 39/52 |
Sean Collier |
Funny actresses, unfunny script. |
| 66/196 |
Max Braden |
Amy Poehler completely makes the movie. It's a solid movie but feels like it could have been edgier. |
| 79/98 |
David Mumpower |
Every bit as awful as the trailers made it out to be. I'm just not drinking the Tina Fey kool-aid. |
Former Saturday Night Live players Tina Fey and Amy Poehler will likely be hitting some brand new comedy territory with the release of Baby Mama, a new comedy from Austin Powers co-writer Michael McCullers. In the film, Fey will play a successful single businesswoman (we’ve seen this before — think Fey’s Liz Lemon character on her Emmy-winning NBC sitcom 30 Rock) who at age 37, decides to put her career on the backburner and finally have a child of her own. Finding out she has about a million-to-one chance of actually becoming pregnant, Fey gets a South Philly working girl (Poehler) to become her surrogate mother. All is well until the surrogate shows up at Fey’s doorstep, asking for a place to stay. The pair, polar opposites at best, struggle in their preparations for the arrival of Fey’s baby. Along the way, they’ll discover life’s two families: those you’re born into and those you make.
When it comes to female comedians, few top Fey. Joining SNL in 1997, she became the show’s first female head writer in 1999 and remained on the sketch comedy staple until 2006. For her final six SNL seasons, she even co-anchored the famed Weekend Update desk, first with Jimmy Fallon until 2004 and then with Baby Mama co-star Poehler until her departure. Fey now stars in the aforementioned 30 Rock, which she co-writes, now in its second season. As for the box office, Fey hardly has a proven track record, though 2004’s Mean Girls, which she adapted and starred in, earned upwards of $86 million domestically, and nearly $130 million overall. Baby Mama will be just her second star vehicle.
And Fey and Poehler are hardly the ensemble comedy’s lone known cast members. The film also features, among others, Greg Kinnear, Sigourney Weaver, Holland Taylor, Maura Tierney, Romany Malco and Dax Shepard.
Baby Mama marks McCullers’ directorial debut. Prior to a late '90s writing stint at SNL, he also co-wrote the financially successful Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and Austin Powers in Goldmember — with Undercover Brother sandwiched in between. The two Austin Powers flicks turned out to be quite lucrative at the box office, earning upwards of $200 million each, including a monstrous $73 million opening weekend for Goldmember back in 2002. (Eric Hughes/BOP)
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