Baby Mama
HEADLINE: ** Liberal Sensibilities **
Title: BABY MAMA
Quality: * * * Acceptability: -2
SUBTITLES: None
WARNING CODES:
Language: LLL
Violence: None
Sex: S
Nudity: None
RATING: PG-13
RELEASE: April 25, 2008
TIME: 96 minutes
STARRING: Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Greg Kinnear, Steve Martin, Sigourney Weaver, Dax Shepard, Romany Malco, Maura Tierney, and Holland Taylor
DIRECTOR: Michael McCullers
PRODUCERS: Lorne Michaels and John Goldwyn
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Jill Messick, Louise E. Rosner and Ryan Kavanaugh
WRITER: Michael McCullers
BASED ON THE NOVEL/PLAY BY: N/A
DISTRIBUTOR: Universal Pictures/General Electric
CONTENT: (RoRo, FeFe, LLL, S, A, DD, M) Strong liberal Romantic worldview with strong feminist ideology where women can have babies and not get married, but they can make it on their own with or without a male, but the most supportive fathers are liberal compassionate ones who don't really want to get married right away but are extremely supportive of the single working mother; 14 obscenities, 12 light profanities (usually My God), woman gets sick into toilet, some crudities; no violence; implied fornication when unmarried woman stays overnight at man's place and some light references to procedures regarding artificial insemination, surrogate mothering and a common law marriage; no nudity; alcohol use; brief smoking references and a drug reference; and, lying and deceit.
GENRE: Comedy
INTENDED AUDIENCE: Teenagers and adults
Please address your comments to:
Jeffrey R. Immelt, Chairman/CEO, General Electric
Jeff Zucker, President/CEO, NBC Universal Entertainment
Ron Meyer, President/COO, Universal Studios
Marc Shmuger, Chairman
David Linde, Co-Chairman
Universal Pictures
100 Universal City Plaza
Universal City, CA 91608-1085
Phone: (818) 777-1000
Web Page: www.universalstudios.com
SUMMARY: In BABY MAMA, a 37-uear-old professional career woman hires a blue-collar woman to be the surrogate mother for her child, leading to a comic battle of wills. Better writing would help make BABY MAMA funnier, but the movie also suffers from a liberal feminist perspective on making babies and families.
IN BRIEF:
BABY MAMA stars Tina Fey as Kate, vice president of a health foods chain. At 37, Kate discovers a yearning to have a baby, but has no prospects of landing a husband. So, she decides to get artificially inseminated. When Kate learns she has little chance of getting pregnant, she turns to a surrogate mother agency. The agency pairs Kate with Angie (played by Amy Poehler), a blue-collar young woman living with her permanently unemployed common-law husband, Carl. Angie agrees to have Kate's baby, but she has a fight with Carl and turns up on Kate's doorstep. A comic battle of wills ensues as super-organized Kate lays down strict rules of prenatal parenting for free-spirited Angie.
Considering the talent behind this movie, BABY MAMA should be funnier. The characters are too stereotypical, and too much of the comedy relies on one-liners. A bigger problem is the movie's liberal sensibility, which stems from a Romantic, feminist worldview. Thus, in the world of BABY MAMA, it is okay for unmarried women to get pregnant and for career women to get along on their own with or without a man, especially a husband.
NOTE from Dr. Ted Baehr, publisher of Movieguide Magazine. For more information from a Christian perspective, order the latest Movieguide Magazine by calling 1-800-899-6684(MOVI) or visit our website at www.movieguide.org. Movieguide is dedicated to redeeming the values of Hollywood by informing parents about today's movies and entertainment and by showing media executives and artists that family-friendly and even Christian-friendly movies do best at the box office year in and year out. Movieguide now offers an online subscription to its magazine version, atwww.movieguide.org. The magazine, which comes out 25 times a year, contains many informative articles and reviews that help parents train their children to be media-wise consumers.
