Working Mamas (film review of ‘Baby Mama’)

The unwritten rule of Hollywood comedies is like that classic admonition given boxers the night before a fight: Women weaken legs. In this case, “legs” means a movie’s potential at the box office. Which is why it seems unusual for two women, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, to have the leads in the new buddy comedy “Baby Mama.”

In the film, Fey – the first female head writer on “Saturday Night Live,” and now creator and star of NBC’s “30 Rock” – is Kate, aching to have a baby in her yawning 30s but saddled with what her gynecologist laments is a “T-shaped uterus.”

Enter Angie, played by Poehler, “SNL’s” current sketch star. Angie is a gum-chomping, working-class girl whom Kate enlists as the surrogate “baby mama” to carry her child to term.

It’s almost like an experiment in comedy science class: What if the roles went to funny women who’ve earned their shot at big-screen success?

Fey and Poehler met in the early ‘90s in Chicago, as newbie sketch artists at the famed Second City, then again a decade later as fellow cast members on “Saturday Night Live,” where they eventually co-anchored the “Weekend Update” segment.

In 2004, they appeared in “Mean Girls,” a satire of vicious girl-on-girl, high school peer pressure written by Fey.

On a recent Friday morning, they were together again – for breakfast at the St. Regis in midtown Manhattan.

Q: Hollywood comedies are normally marketed to 14-year-old boys, but your movie is more adult and well-mannered than that. It’s also about a sensitive issue: women becoming single moms by choice. Do you think it’s a harder sell for Universal because there’s no movie star or large-breasted woman on the poster?

Poehler (laughs): Everything is a harder sell until it’s a success, and then it’s not.

Fey: There was no movie star on the “Superbad” poster until they were movie stars.

Poehler: I like movies that 14-year-old boys like; I like a lot of those. I would hope that they would like the same things I like, too.

Q: So how did this project get off the ground?

Fey: Michael McCullers, the writer-director, wanted to do something for the two of us and came to (“Saturday Night Live” creator) Lorne (Michaels). And we were like, “Great.” Nobody ever wants to give you something. … This is a completely dude-safe movie.

Poehler: It is very dude-safe.

Q: What do you mean by dude-safe?

Fey: There are plenty of jokes in there. They’re not gonna sit there and be, like, “Oh, my God, I can’t believe my wife dragged me to the movie ‘Wedding Fight.’ “

Q: You both write as well as perform your material, but you don’t have writing credits on “Baby Mama.” Does that mean your input on the film was more scene-to-scene?

Fey: I think it went how we wanted it, which was, like, he (McCullers) did all the story breaking and heavy lifting and writing the actual movie. And then he let us improvise our dialogue a little bit. If we had a joke, he would add it.

Poehler: Weirdly, I’m gonna get a “head of the studio” credit. I forgot to tell you.

Fey: I got “craft services removal.” Is that because I ate a lot?

Q: “Baby Mama” is a breakout role for you, Amy, where we see your chops in more than five-minute bursts of wacky sketches. With Tina on “30 Rock,” you’ve both now had to go from being funny in five-minute spurts to playing more real and three-dimensional characters.

Poehler: Every comedian – at least me, I’ll speak for myself – wants to be considered an actor. … I’ve kind of played arch characters that come in and try to be kind of crazy and leave. So I was excited to actually hunker down a little bit. “Feel the Earth,” as my yoga teacher would say.

Q: That’s what was such a revelation about seeing Steve Carell in “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.” You loved him as a correspondent on “The Daily Show,” but were you really going to be able to care about him for 90 minutes?

Fey: Amy and I saw Steve onstage at Second City before he ever went to “The Dana Carvey Show,” and I felt like I knew – wait until people really see what this guy can do. He was so brilliant, and it was kind of fun just to watch it unfold. He has such a warmth to him. I thought he was just so great in “40-Year-Old Virgin” because he had such vulnerability and warmth and pathos.

Q: You’re both in your late 30s but really now hitting your stride. Is being funny the key for a woman to survive a show business career where 32 is otherwise over the hill?

Poehler: If I could be where I’m at, but back it up five years, I’d be psyched. … But, however, if this kind of stuff had happened to me when I was 26, I don’t know if I’d be able to (handle it).

Fey: I think in a way “SNL” is a mixed blessing. Because you have to generate your own stuff there, you feel like you are always going to be able to come up with something for yourself; you feel independent of the system in a way that is either great or completely foolhardy.

Poehler: I think we both tend to be kind of late bloomers. We’ve always been attracted, both of us, to late bloomers in general anyway. There’s a lot of women in comedy right now that are actually our age. … All similar age. I don’t know what that means.

Fey: That we’re not alone being in that position.

Poehler: All our mothers took a very interesting drug when they were pregnant.