baby mama

I've said before that I'm a big fan of 30Rock.

Along with The Big Bang Theory I think it's probably one of the best comedy shows around at the moment.

30Rock stars Tina Fey, who's also the head writer of a weekly comedy show, which is based loosely on her time as head writer of Saturday Night Live. We don't really have an equivalent to Saturday Night Live here in the UK, but the name is pretty self-explanatory.

Anyway, the point is I like Tina Fey and was therefore probably expecting more of this. Well, I say that, but I saw some stuff at the time of Baby Mama's release at the cinema saying it wasn't very good.

Broadly, I'd agree with that, I think.

To be totally fair to it, it is a comedy and I did find it funny in many places. However, there are long stretches without very many gags. And I don't mean there are bits where the gags aren't funny - it's more like it has a chunk of jokes, most of which are pretty good, and then there will be a fairly long bit where there just aren't any.

The comedic pacing seems a bit off, in other words. But this isn't what makes it not very good. That is a more difficult thing to really explain.

See, the basic plot of the film is that Fey's character is a successful career woman who's biological clock has started ticking. She tries to find a man, but scares them off. She tries using a sperm donor and artificial insemination, but it turns out she has a T-shaped uterus, making it a million to one shot. So she does to a surrogate agency.

And if you hadn't guessed one of the contributing factors to why this isn't very good by now, I'm not going to tell you. Actually, yes I am - it all feels too predictable. Is there anything in the above that you couldn't really guess? And can you guess how it goes on?

Well, okay, there are some bits that surprised me, but more because it didn't pick the options I was expecting it to - what it ended up picking wasn't really a surprise as such.

Another thing that didn't really help is that Fey's character isn't hugely likeable. She's a bit of a snob and doesn't really seem to learn much throughout the course of the course of the film. And generally the film is quite wimpish like that.

I mean here's a good example - she works for a 'big corporate' that produced natural fruit juices and smoothies. She then meets the owner of a small shop that also does natural juices and smoothies.

Now the implication is that his business is tanking, though this is never really explored. Also, Tina Fey is responsible for building a big mall/shopping centre thing (I didn't get this - they're a juice company building a mall. Eh?) down the road that's going to presumably destroy his business (his business that doesn't really seem to have any customers anyway).

Initially she deceives him about it, but when he finds out, he's not really all that bothered. Indeed, he starts dating her.

Which just comes off as sloppy writing. I mean, he doesn't really even seem all that bothered when he finds out she's using a surrogate and yet they seem to stop seeing each other. So if he's not bothered, why do they split up; if he is, why is he not more miffed when he finds out?

When you add into the mix the fact that Steve Martin and Sigourney Weaver pop up and both give, quite frankly, scene stealing performances it all seems like a bit of a mess. Not a disaster, but a "tries hard could do better".