guest critic: baby mama (rebuttal review)
Hey y'all. My good friend Pistola Whipped has graciously offered her rebuttal to my review of Baby Mama. (She liked it; I didn't.) Enjoy!
So, this is my attempt at a movie review and like everything I do, it’s outdated, irrelevant and probably misinformed. However, after reading Nayana’s review of Baby Mama, I felt it my responsibility to the non-douchebag moviegoers of the blog-a-go-go to offer a different perspective on a movie Nayana panned. In fact, I think she may have liked the douchebag sitting next to her, or behind her better than she did Baby Mama.
Lemme say right now that I had no real strong desire to watch Baby Mama. Judging from the previews, I thought it would be another pre-fab SNL skit-to-big-screen attempt, rife with piss-poor jokes, obvious product placement and the dreaded Lorne Michael cameo. And in all honesty, it was those things, except I don’t know if Tina Fey and Amy Poehler ever specifically created a skit for SNL with the Baby Mama motif. It does seem that all the bouncing one-liners and sardonic grins off each other during the past few years of "Weekend Update" was enough energy to spark a light bulb in a GE head upstairs. And poof: those bitches got themselves a movie deal. And not only that, but they got to laugh, look good and hang out in their hometown of Philadelphia while fulfilling it.
I laughed aloud a lot at this movie. I thought it was clever, touching and funny. Tina Fey played her character with humility and practicality, which gave cinematic vets Steve Martin and Sigourney Weaver a chance to play totally offbeat, freaky characters. Greg Kinnear shone in his granola-y, anti-big business, pro-neighborhood role. I don’t know many big-budget, multi-millionaire actors who could pull off the irony of his part. And I’m no fan of Dax Shepherd, but I didn’t really have to be, since he played the a-hole in this movie, and he played it well. I was most surprised by how much I loved Amy Poehler. She was lovably neurotic, fiercely loyal, and even though she was deceitful and felonious, I still wanted her and Tina to be best friends!
So, if dumb, overplayed, stereotypical SNL movies don’t trip your trigger, then I’m not going to try and change your mind. And this movie won’t either. However, I don’t doubt for a second that Fey and Poehler, smarty-pants that they are, view Baby Mama as a way to bust into Hollywood/the men’s locker room so they can brand their comedy and make movies on their own terms. They have honed their trade, and if you can take out the airbrushed cheekbones, plays on stereotypes, and hole-filled plot, Baby Mama is like watching "Weekend Update" for an hour and a half, with some interesting people stopping by.
So, this is my attempt at a movie review and like everything I do, it’s outdated, irrelevant and probably misinformed. However, after reading Nayana’s review of Baby Mama, I felt it my responsibility to the non-douchebag moviegoers of the blog-a-go-go to offer a different perspective on a movie Nayana panned. In fact, I think she may have liked the douchebag sitting next to her, or behind her better than she did Baby Mama.
Lemme say right now that I had no real strong desire to watch Baby Mama. Judging from the previews, I thought it would be another pre-fab SNL skit-to-big-screen attempt, rife with piss-poor jokes, obvious product placement and the dreaded Lorne Michael cameo. And in all honesty, it was those things, except I don’t know if Tina Fey and Amy Poehler ever specifically created a skit for SNL with the Baby Mama motif. It does seem that all the bouncing one-liners and sardonic grins off each other during the past few years of "Weekend Update" was enough energy to spark a light bulb in a GE head upstairs. And poof: those bitches got themselves a movie deal. And not only that, but they got to laugh, look good and hang out in their hometown of Philadelphia while fulfilling it.
I laughed aloud a lot at this movie. I thought it was clever, touching and funny. Tina Fey played her character with humility and practicality, which gave cinematic vets Steve Martin and Sigourney Weaver a chance to play totally offbeat, freaky characters. Greg Kinnear shone in his granola-y, anti-big business, pro-neighborhood role. I don’t know many big-budget, multi-millionaire actors who could pull off the irony of his part. And I’m no fan of Dax Shepherd, but I didn’t really have to be, since he played the a-hole in this movie, and he played it well. I was most surprised by how much I loved Amy Poehler. She was lovably neurotic, fiercely loyal, and even though she was deceitful and felonious, I still wanted her and Tina to be best friends!
So, if dumb, overplayed, stereotypical SNL movies don’t trip your trigger, then I’m not going to try and change your mind. And this movie won’t either. However, I don’t doubt for a second that Fey and Poehler, smarty-pants that they are, view Baby Mama as a way to bust into Hollywood/the men’s locker room so they can brand their comedy and make movies on their own terms. They have honed their trade, and if you can take out the airbrushed cheekbones, plays on stereotypes, and hole-filled plot, Baby Mama is like watching "Weekend Update" for an hour and a half, with some interesting people stopping by.
May 20, 2008 at 4:34 PM
exactly pistola. exactly. and not because you drove me to the movie. because I believe Amy and Tina will continue to play the game until they rule the game. and in the end it made me giggle.
May 20, 2008 at 5:24 PM
I actually really like Dax Shepard, but I think that's more for his Punk'd work than his movie career...with an exception to Zathura of course.
May 21, 2008 at 7:07 PM
Excellent review! I wanted to see the movie for all the reasons you seemed to like it...thanks.