Baby Mama Critic Reviews

For those who crave mannerisms and shtick and like their jokes set up and knocked out with plenty of arrows and quote marks, Baby Mama may fall flat. But audiences alive to the modest charms of its take on female friendship will be rewarded with at least a few quiet chuckles.Read the full review

The movie hardly allows itself any sharp moments at all -- it's much too sweet-natured to be cruel, and much too cheerful to be angry. It probably could have pushed a few more buttons, but Baby Mama aims to please and succeeds.Read the full review

Though the competition hasn't exactly been stiff, Fey and Poehler may well be the best female comedy duo since Lucy and Ethel.Read the full review

Baby Mama is the most disappointing movie of the year so far--which, granted, isn't saying a lot in mid-April.Read the full review

There's nothing terribly wrong with Baby Mama but it's probably better suited for viewing on television, where many of the participants cut their teeth. This is small screen stuff masquerading as something bigger.Read the full review

The show is redeemed by its co-stars, up to a point. They struggle womanfully, and sometimes successfully, to find truth in the script's silly symphony of false notes.Read the full review

It's not without laughs--Poehler and Fey, as ever, have strong chemistry, and there's a truly bizarre scene in which Martin offers Fey a strange "reward" for a job well done--but there's a lot of arid space between them.Read the full review

Although the big picture itself gets mushy, the small moments, especially involving Fey, are sharp.Read the full review

The film never comes fully to term, as it were: the visual style is sitcom functional, and even the zippiest jokes fall flat because of poor timing. But, much like the prickly, talented Ms. Fey, it pulls you in with a provocative and, at least in current American movies, unusual mix of female intelligence, awkwardness and chilled-to-the-bone mean.Read the full review