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By Cole Smithey

‘Baby Mama’

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Baby madness happily invades the brain of Philadelphia bachelorette and thriving businesswoman Kate Holbrook (Tina Fey) who, at the ripe age of 37, hires a surrogate mom to birth her sperm bank assisted baby. Amy Poehler plays Angie Ostrowiski, the white trash bimbet whose uterus will host Holbrook’s kin while she soaks up her upper class lifestyle as her temporary roommate. Poehler and Fey display a snappy on-screen chemistry that supports writer/director Michael McCullers’ quick-witted set pieces. Steve Martin makes a rare and humorous appearance as Holbrook’s crunchy granola boss, and supporting cast members Greg Kinnear, Sigourney Weaver, Romany Malco and Maura Tierney keep the laughs bubbling. Surrogate motherhood is the comic topic of the day, and this is one funny chick flick that won’t rankle male members of the audience.

McCullers makes a feature film debut that profits hugely from “Saturday Night Live” as a pervasive influence of tone. The obvious consequence of former SNL cast members Poehler, Fey and Martin working together as firmly established comedians working at the top of their game, lends an underlying wink of absurdity to everything that happens.

Fey loses herself in a role that draws you in on a primal level because everyone understands the alarm of a woman’s biological clock going off like a three-alarm fire. McCullers pays attention to detail to mine humor from Holbrook’s trips to the sperm bank, bathroom and surrogate baby company consultant Chaffee Bicknell (Weaver), whose ability to give birth in her 50s backhandedly ridicules Holbrook’s desperation.

Class conflict is at the core of the story. Ostrowiski is a trash-talking girlfriend to her high school beau Carl (Dax Shephard), who still drives around in the same old red Trans Am and has an eye on splitting the $10,000 from Ostrowiski’s surrogate pregnancy. Shephard may only have one character in his repertoire, but he knows it well. Carl is set up as a false antagonist pulling at Ostrowiski, whose entree into a world of financial liberty brings out her true nature as a responsible adult, but only after many goofy incidents.

One great example of Ostrowiski’s confused social graces comes when she answers Holbrook’s door to find her courting love interest Rob (Kinnear). “Do come in,” Ostrowiski says with an emphasis on the “do.” Poehler’s comic phrasing goes off on a tear as she lies about being Holbrook’s sister and takes a cell phone call from Europe for which she speaks broken Spanish. Holbrook leaves for her date with Rob with her toothbrush sticking out of her mouth. It’s these kind of detailed comic touches that keep adding up to reveal layers of character in Holbrook and Ostrowiski as opposite sides of the same coin.

“Baby Mama,” a ghetto term turned mainstream thanks to K-Fed and Britney Spears, is a comedy of female humor set to spin by its gifted performers. The film’s producers’ aim to attract viewers for Fey’s television show “30 Rock” is a worthy goal if generating this level of comedy is the thing movie audiences get in exchange. As with all comedy, it’s all in the delivery. CV

‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’

Movie Trailer

Full-frontal male nudity achieves de rigueur R-rated status in American cinema thanks to the shameless efforts of Judd Apatow’s gang of cutting-edge writers and directors that have delivered movies like “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” “Knocked Up” and “Superbad.” It’s not exactly telling tales out of school to reveal “Sarah Marshall’s” opening scene wherein one very nude Jason Segel exposes more than just his character’s Peter Bretter’s heart on his sleeve before being unceremoniously dumped by his girlfriend of the film’s title. Sarah (Kristen Bell) is a semi-famous television actress who throws over Bretter’s affections in favor of a Fabioesque British singer/songwriter called Aldous Snow (Russell Brand). Unromantic and romantic intrigue follow when Bretter attempts to escape his broken heart on a trip to Hawaii where his ex and her cocky boy toy have coincidentally rented a room in the same all-inclusive resort. Segel makes a nearly lovable sadsack who gets some sensual healing from the hotel’s lovely concierge Rachel Jansen (Mila Kunis). The comedy is at once sophisticated, bawdy, and infused with ridiculous situations derived from screenwriter/actor Segel’s checkered romantic past.

At the heart of the volatile satire is the droopy torch that overly sensitive Bretter carries for his shallow celebrity ex-girlfriend. Tall and pudgy Bretter composes and performs piano music for Marshall’s quirky homicide TV show that features kinky sexual aspects to all its victims’ deaths. He’s a work-at-home guy who relishes eating gargantuan bowls of sugary breakfast cereal in the raw. As we learn via clever flashback sequences, Marshall wore the pants in the relationship. At premiers, paparazzi yell at the out-of-place “boyfriend” to get out of the shot so they can feed on Marshall’s white bread beauty like guppies at dinnertime while he’s left holding her purse. The experience of dating such a gorehound for attention has left him emasculated with the kind of self-loathing that ad agencies build empires on.

On the flipside of Marshall’s not-so-brilliant design for fleeting romance is her dubious choice for Bretter’s replacement. Snow is a phony and a stereotypical fame-glutton so in love with himself that he makes Marshall’s half-hearted narcissism seem amateurish by comparison. Here’s Marshall’s role model that taught her how to treat Bretter. A lot of comedy derives from seeing Bretter come face to face with this double rival whose egotistical attitude Marshall vicariously lords over him.

For as much pain as the cult-of-celebrity has cost Bretter, the climate of corporate slackerdom comes to his rescue. Kunis’ Jansen couldn’t care less about any hotel employee policies about not fraternizing with guests, and her unfocused working class character is an effective foil against the Marshalls and Snows of the world. Marshall’s visage may have the approval of the masses, but Jansen’s outward beauty is reinforced with a generous nonchalance that all but cancels out Marshall’s excuses for existence. The filmmakers have fun poking some lesbian subtext into a couple of encounters between Jansen and Marshall. It’s this kind of random tension that simmers between the film’s guffaw-inducing sex scenes.

Fans of Apatow’s comedies will appreciate Paul Rudd’s performance as an ageless surfing instructor and Jonah Hill’s fawning role as a gay restaurant maitre ’d with a sideline-recording career. Director Nicholas Stoller makes his directing debut, but the movie belongs to Segel for his audacious script and constant presence as a recovering romantic accoutrement. “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” is a romantic comedy for guys, but there’s plenty of material aimed at female audiences as well, not the least of which are the full-frontal male assaults. American cinema isn’t all about bush anymore. CV

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