Director: Michael McCullers   
Cast: Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Greg Kinnear, Steve Martin, Dax Shepard   
Running Time: 98 minutes   
Distributor: UIP   
Release Date: August 14   
Rating: PG   

Tina Fey has become a one-woman comedy industry, churning out one great piece of work after another. Having started out on Saturday Night Live, Fey has gone on to great things in both movies and television, bringing her uniquely subtle brand of humour to projects like Mean Girls and 30 Rock.

In Baby Mama, Fey stars as Kate, a successful executive who suddenly longs to have a baby, her T-shaped uterus be damned. She hires a white trash gal, Angie (fellow SNL alumnus Amy Poehler), to be her surrogate, and the two end up developing a close bond despite the fact that they have little in common besides man trouble.

Fey and Poehler share a wonderful chemistry, and their mismatched-buddie shtick comes off very well. Fey plays her role quite straight, giving Poehler a chance to steal scenes with her slightly broad caricature of a low-class girl, peeing in the sink and sticking her gum under Kate’s reclaimed barnwood coffee table. She calls Kate’s top-of-the-line Audi a “space car”.

The supporting cast is superb, with Steve Martin turning in a snappy performance as Kate’s insufferable Boomer boss, and Greg Kinnear is great as the new man in Kate’s life, a local juice shop owner with an all-consuming hatred for Jamba Juice. –Ebo

THE VERDICT
Smart, sweet and very funny.