Baby Mama | |
---|---|
Directed by | Michael McCullers |
Written by | Michael McCullers |
Produced by | |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Daryn Okada |
Edited by | Bruce Green |
Music by | Jeff Richmond |
Production companies |
|
Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 99 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $30 million [1] |
Box office | $64.4 million [1] |
Baby Mama is a 2008 American romantic comedy film written and directed by Michael McCullers in his directorial debut and starring Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Greg Kinnear, Dax Shepard, Romany Malco, Maura Tierney, Holland Taylor, with Steve Martin, and Sigourney Weaver.
Produced by Relativity Media, Baby Mama was distributed by Universal Pictures on April 25, 2008. It received moderately positive reviews and grossed $64 million worldwide.
Successful single business executive Kate Holbrook from Philadelphia has always prioritized her career over her personal life. Now at age 37, she finally decides to have her own child, but discovers she has a T-shaped uterus, minimizing her chances of becoming pregnant. Also denied the chance to adopt, Kate hires immature, obnoxious, South Philadelphian Angie Ostrowski to become her surrogate mother.
After learning from Chaffee Bicknell, the steely head of their surrogacy center, that Angie has become pregnant, Kate prepares for motherhood in her own typically driven fashion; reading childcare books, baby-proofing the apartment, and researching top pre-schools. However, her strategy is upended when Angie shows up at her door, homeless. Their conflicting personalities put them at odds as Kate learns first-hand about balancing motherhood and career, especially when she begins dating the owner of a local blended-juice cafe, Rob Ackerman.
Unbeknownst to Kate, Angie's in-vitro fertilization procedure had failed and she is feigning the pregnancy, hoping to ultimately run off with her payment. She starts to regret lying, but continually puts off confessing. When Angie gets an ultrasound, she discovers she is indeed pregnant. Realizing the baby is her own - with her common-law husband Carl, from whom she is separated - Angie is forced to confess at Kate's baby shower. Kate explains to Angie that the pregnancy test was supposed to be taken two weeks after the procedure, so the baby could still belong to her.
A court hearing determines that the baby is Angie's, and Angie impassionedly apologizes to Kate. As the women meet face-to-face after the proceedings, Angie's water breaks and Kate rushes her to the hospital, then passes out during the birth. As she wakes up, the doctor supervising Angie tells Kate that she's two months pregnant (the result of her relationship with Rob). After receiving the news, she visits Angie, who is holding her newborn daughter Stef, named for Gwen Stefani. Kate forgives Angie and they become best friends, ultimately changing each other for the better.
A year later at Stef's first-birthday party, Kate and Rob have had a daughter and are engaged, and Angie and Kate have retained a sister-like relationship. Although he does not reunite with Angie, Carl stays close to his daughter and takes parenting classes. In the final scene, Angie and Kate sit in front of a television set with their daughters, watching Tom and Jerry cartoons.
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 63% based on 166 reviews, with an average rating of 6.20/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "Baby Mama is a lightweight, predictable comedy that ekes by on the strength of its performers." [2] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 55 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". [3] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale. [4]
In its opening weekend, Baby Mama grossed $17,407,110 in 2,543 theaters in the United States and Canada, ranking #1 at the box office and averaging $6,845 per theater. [5] Baby Mama eventually grossed a total of $64,163,648. Its production budget was $30 million. [1]
Baby Mama was released on September 9, 2008, on both DVD and Blu-ray. [6] Extras included commentary with writer/director Michael McCullers and cast members Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, From Conception to Delivery: The Making of Baby Mama featurette, an alternate ending, deleted scenes, and Saturday Night Live : Legacy of Laughter.
Elizabeth Stamatina "Tina" Fey is an American actress, comedian, writer, and producer. She was a cast member and head writer for the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 1997 to 2006. After her departure from SNL, she created the NBC sitcom 30 Rock and the Netflix sitcom Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2015–2020), the former of which she also starred in. Fey is also known for her work in film, including Mean Girls (2004), Baby Mama (2008), Date Night (2010), Megamind (2010), Muppets Most Wanted (2014), Sisters (2015), Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (2016), Wine Country (2019), Soul (2020), A Haunting in Venice (2023), and Mean Girls (2024).
Amy Poehler is an American actress and comedian. After studying improv at Chicago's Second City and ImprovOlympic in the early 1990s, Poehler co-founded the improvisational-comedy troupe Upright Citizens Brigade. The group moved to New York City in 1996, where their act became a half-hour sketch-comedy series on Comedy Central in 1998. Along with other members of the comedy group, Poehler is a founder of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre.
Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo is a 1999 American sex comedy film directed by Mike Mitchell and written by Harris Goldberg and Rob Schneider. The film stars Schneider, William Forsythe, Eddie Griffin, and Arija Bareikis, with supporting roles by Oded Fehr, Gail O'Grady, Richard Riehle, Jacqueline Obradors, Big Boy, Amy Poehler, and Dina Platias. The film tells the story of a hapless fishtank cleaner who goes into business as a male prostitute in an attempt to earn enough money to repair damage he caused while house-sitting. It was the first film produced by Adam Sandler's production company Happy Madison Productions.
Angie is a 1994 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Martha Coolidge, written by Todd Graff, and starring Geena Davis as the title character. It was produced by Caravan Pictures and distributed by Hollywood Pictures. It is based on the 1991 novel Angie, I Says by Avra Wing, which was a New York Times Notable Book of 1991. The film received mixed reviews and was a box office bomb, grossing only $9.4 million against its $26 million budget.
Romany Romanic Malco Jr. is an American actor, rapper, and music producer. He has been nominated for several awards, including an NAACP Image Award, MTV Movie Award, and Screen Actors Guild Award. In film, he is best known for his roles in The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005), Baby Mama (2008), Think Like a Man (2012) and its sequel Think Like a Man Too (2014), and The DUFF (2015). In television, he is best known for portraying Conrad Shepard on the Showtime series Weeds (2005–2012) and Rome Howard on the ABC series A Million Little Things (2018–2023). He is also known for writing the rap lyrics for the character of MC Skat Kat in "Opposites Attract".
Jeffrey Wayne Richmond is an American composer, comedian, producer, and director. He composed the music for, and directed multiple episodes of 30 Rock, a sitcom created by and starring his wife, Tina Fey. He also executive produced and composed the music for Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, another sitcom created by his wife. Richmond has won three Emmy awards for his production of the first three seasons of 30 Rock. He has also been nominated for an Emmy for his composition of 30 Rock's theme song. He was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Original Score in 2018 for Mean Girls.
A baby mama is a slang term for a mother who is not married to her child's father, although the term often carries other connotations as well. This term is associated with African Americans originally, coming from Jamaican Creole and finding its way into hip-hop music.
The sketch comedy television show Saturday Night Live aired several critically acclaimed sketches parodying then Alaskan Governor and vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin in the lead-up to the 2008 United States presidential election. The sketches featured former cast member Tina Fey, who returned as a guest star to portray Palin. Fey won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her impersonation of Palin.
The thirty-fourth season of Saturday Night Live, an American sketch comedy series, originally aired in the United States on NBC between September 13, 2008, and May 16, 2009.
"Cooter" is the fifteenth and final episode of the second season of 30 Rock and the thirty-sixth episode of the series. It was written by series' creator Tina Fey and was directed by one of the season's producers, Don Scardino. The episode first aired on May 8, 2008, on the NBC network in the United States. "Cooter" follows Jack Donaghy's attempt to get fired from his new job in politics; Liz Lemon's (Fey) pregnancy scare and decision to adopt a baby; Tracy Jordan's creation of a pornographic video game; and Kenneth Parcell's aspiration to be an NBC page at the Beijing Olympics. The episode is an unofficial season finale, due to the season being shortened by the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike.
A Little Bit of Heaven is a 2011 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Nicole Kassell, and starring Kate Hudson and Gael García Bernal.
I Don't Know How She Does It is a 2011 American comedy film based on Allison Pearson's 2002 novel of the same name. Directed by Douglas McGrath, the film stars Sarah Jessica Parker, Pierce Brosnan and Greg Kinnear.
Admission is a 2013 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Paul Weitz and starring Tina Fey and Paul Rudd. The film was released in the United States and Canada on March 22, 2013. It is an adaptation of Jean Hanff Korelitz's 2009 novel of the same name.
Think Like a Man Too is a 2014 American romantic comedy film directed by Tim Story. It is the sequel to the 2012 film Think Like a Man, based on Steve Harvey's 2009 book Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man. The script was written by David A. Newman and Keith Merryman, with Will Packer returning as producer but now under his Will Packer Productions banner. The film features an ensemble cast that includes Michael Ealy, Meagan Good, Regina Hall, Terrence J, Taraji P. Henson, Romany Malco, Gabrielle Union, Jerry Ferrara, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Gary Owen and Kevin Hart, with Jennifer Lewis and La La Anthony in supporting roles.
This Is Where I Leave You is a 2014 American comedy drama film directed by Shawn Levy, and starring Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Adam Driver, Rose Byrne, Corey Stoll, Kathryn Hahn, Connie Britton, Timothy Olyphant, Dax Shepard and Jane Fonda. It is based on the 2009 novel of the same title by Jonathan Tropper, who also wrote the film's screenplay. This Is Where I Leave You tells the story of four grown siblings who are forced to return to their childhood home after their father's death and live under the same roof for seven days, along with their over-sharing mother and an assortment of spouses, exes, and might-have-beens. The film was released on September 19, 2014, and grossed $41.3 million against a $19.8 million production budget.
Sisters is a 2015 American comedy film directed by Jason Moore, written by Paula Pell and is the second collaboration between Tina Fey and Amy Poehler following the film Baby Mama (2008). The rest of the cast consists of Maya Rudolph, Ike Barinholtz, James Brolin, John Cena, John Leguizamo, Bobby Moynihan, and Dianne Wiest.
The 72nd Golden Globe Awards, honoring the best in film and American television of 2014, was broadcast live from the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California on January 11, 2015, by NBC. The ceremony was produced by Dick Clark Productions in association with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. George Clooney was announced as the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award honoree on September 14, 2014. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler were the co-hosts for the third consecutive time. The nominations were announced on December 11, 2014 by Kate Beckinsale, Peter Krause, Paula Patton and Jeremy Piven. The Affair, Birdman, Boyhood, Fargo, The Theory of Everything, and Transparent were among the films and television shows that received multiple awards.
The House is a 2017 American comedy film directed by Andrew J. Cohen, and co-written by Cohen and Brendan O'Brien. The film stars Will Ferrell, Amy Poehler, Jason Mantzoukas, Ryan Simpkins, Nick Kroll, Allison Tolman, Rob Huebel, Michaela Watkins, and Jeremy Renner, and follows a couple who open an underground casino in their friend's house in order to pay for their daughter's college tuition.
Think Like a Man is a 2012 American romantic comedy film directed by Tim Story, written by Keith Merryman and David A. Newman, and produced by Will Packer. It was based on Steve Harvey's 2009 book Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man. The film stars an ensemble cast, featuring Kevin Hart, Meagan Good, Jerry Ferrara, Regina Hall, Michael Ealy, Terrence J, Taraji P. Henson, Romany Malco, and Gabrielle Union.
The following is the complete filmography of actress, comedian, writer, and producer Tina Fey.
on the strength of a decent B+ CinemaScore review from an audience that was, as you'd expect, 68 percent female.