BEFORE: Not really a fan of pulpy detective stories, and there are none on my list anyway - and I'm still not ready for the snore-fest that is "Casablanca", so instead I'll send Birthday SHOUT-out #41 to Tina Fey, born 5/18/1970, and last seen in "Date Night". I could have (and perhaps should have) watched this one along with "Juno", "Knocked Up", "Baby Boom" and "The Brothers Solomon" - could have been a nice little chain.
THE PLOT: A successful, single businesswoman who dreams of having a baby discovers she is infertile and hires a working class woman to be her unlikely surrogate.
AFTER: I won't deny that there are funny bits here, but why does Hollywood insist on portraying women who can't get pregnant as broken or imperfect, and women who choose not to get pregnant as self-centered bitches? Where are the female characters who just don't like kids, without that being a character flaw? Or ones who are infertile, and they're fine with that because they don't think they could be good mothers, anyway? I guess you don't really have much of a story arc with those characters...
It seems like in the movies, it's the women who are least fertile that WANT babies the most - or am I off-base here? At least Tina Fey's character here is career-oriented without being cut-throat (this is what passes for progress?). The best bits seem to come at the expense of the hippie-crunchy health food/vegan/yoga lifestyle, as exhibited by the CEO of a Whole-Foods like company (Steve Martin, last seen in "The Lonely Guy")
In the end, some funny material. Humor often comes from the juxtaposition of elements - a neat guy living with a messy guy, for example. Here you take a pregnant white trash girl and make her live with a non-pregnant executive type, and watch the humor flow in true "Odd Couple" style. Or take a hippie mystic type and put him in a corporate executive position. Or take a lawyer and have him open up a fruit-smoothie business. It's all a little by-the-numbers, but it works.
Also starring Amy Poehler (last heard in "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel"), Greg Kinnear (last seen in "Dear God"), Dax Shepard, Maura Tierney (last seen in "Liar Liar"), Sigourney Weaver (last heard in "The Tale of Despereaux"), with cameos from James Rebhorn (last seen in "Silkwood"), Will Forte (last seen in "Fanboys"), Fred Armisen (last seen in "The Promotion"), John Hodgman (last seen in "The Invention of Lying"), and Siobhan Fallon (as a birthing coach with an unfortunate Elmer Fudd-like accent)
RATING: 6 out of 10 ultrasounds
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