Baby Mama Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

Baby Mama Blu-ray Movie Review

Baby Mania on Blu

Reviewed by Ben Williams September 2, 2008

Tina Fey is quite the hot commodity in Hollywood these days. Building on her pioneering run as “Saturday Night Live’s” first female head writer and her amazing work writing, starring in and creating the hit TV show “30 Rock,” Ms. Fey seems to bring success to just about any project she’s attached to. Fey has always billed herself as a writer first and an actor second, so it’s somewhat surprising to find her headlining a major Hollywood comedy that she had no hand in creating. Baby Mama is her first such starring role and she has wisely chosen a project that surrounds her with many of her former “Saturday Night Live” cohorts.

Kate Holbrook (Tina Fey) is a thirty-something businesswoman who has dedicated her life to her job. As her child-bearing years rapidly fade away, she’s decided that her history of failed romances and her devotion to her job have robbed her of her dreams of becoming a mother. Fearing that waiting for Mr. Right might indefinitely delay her ever having a child, she enlists the services of surrogate mother Angie Ostrowiski (Amy Poehler). Angie is an out of work slacker with a controlling husband (Dax Shepard) who seems to have volunteered his wife for surrogacy as a means of finding a quick paycheck. Hilarity ensues when these two women from completely different walks of life have to try and live together for the sake of Kate’s unborn child.

Tina Fey makes her first foray into the land of the leading lady

Baby Mama is definitely not what I would have expected from Tina Fey. For someone who seems to pride herself on her own brand of pop-culture influenced and extremely intelligent humor, Baby Mama is surprisingly low-brow. That’s not to say that the movie is devoid of humor. Poehler is consistently entertaining with her white-trash take on Angie and Dax Shepard brings a nice dose of the absurd to her moronic husband, Carl. Shepard is clearly playing a slightly less idiotic version of his character from Idiocracy. The bright spot of the film, for me, was in Steve Martin’s performance as Barry, Kate’s hippie boss and owner of a Whole Foods Market-like organic food store. Barry is just plain weird – he rewards good performance from his employees with incentives ranging from “five minutes of uninterrupted eye-contact” to strange head-nuzzling.

Despite the comedic high-points of the film, Baby Mama is, at its core, very sentimental. Even with an abundance of toilet humor, the heart of the film manages to sneak out. A sub-plot involving Kate’s romantic interest in a juice store owner played by Greg Kinnear is well presented and hits all the right emotional notes. MY biggest complaint comes from Tina Fey, herself. She does a fine job in the film, but is just underutilized. She is definitely playing the straight role here and I kept hoping to see more of her abrasive and subversive side come out. Alas, that’s not to be in Baby Mama and what we are left with is a decent romantic comedy with a few occasional flourishes of the brilliance that could have been. In the end, I do recommend Baby Mama - - just don’t expect too much.

Baby Mama Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Baby Mama arrives on Blu-ray from Universal sporting a colorful 1080p transfer from the Mpeg-4 AVC compression codec. The film is framed in its original theatrical ratio of 1.85:1. While nothing about this transfer screams demo material, it is nicely presented and free from all distracting artifacts. I was particularly pleased with the film's accurate and natural color palette. Flesh tones are well presented and the urban landscape of the film is appropriately colorful and not oversaturated. Much of the film takes place inside Kate's very earth-toned apartment and the over-all tone of the film matches that scheme throughout the majority of the film. As long as you aren't expecting any flashy colors or actions sequences, Baby Mama won't leave you disappointed.

Unfortunately, all is not perfect with this Blu-ray edition of Baby Mama. Shadow detail is, at best, average and black levels are occasionally shallow. The film also sports a very soft focus look. I imagine that this was entirely intentional, but for those seeking almost microscopic levels of detail, they aren't to be found here. Fortunately, edge enhancement, compression issues or disturbing halos aren't a problem either. Baby Mama isn't going to qualify as eye-candy, but this Blu-ray presentation does do a great job of looking like a relatively low budget comedy is supposed to look.

Baby Mama Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As has been the case with all of their Blu-ray releases thus far, Baby Mama arrives on Blu-ray with a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack. Movies like Baby Mama are often downgraded to non-lossless formats due to their lack of exciting sound content, so I applaud Universal for sticking with lossless. While lossless has definitely paid off here with clearer and more intelligible dialog, there isn't much to talk about in the surround category.

As such, Baby Mama is a predominantly front-loaded presentation with dialog solidly rooted in the center channel and the occasional musical cue spread out to the front stereo channels. I don't recall, at any time, any noticeable surround activity. Not that this is a bad thing, of course. Surround has its time and place and definitely wouldn't work in a film like Baby Mama. As previously mentioned, Baby Mama is a dialog driven film and it's in this regard that lossless really shows its benefit. Dialog is always perfectly presented without a stray hiss or muted passage. This is especially important in comedy where subtle nuances are often the crux of a particular joke. So, much like its video presentation, the audio side of Baby Mama isn't flashy, but gets the job done.

Baby Mama Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There's not much to report on in the supplemental department with Baby Mama. All we are treated to is a Picture-in-Picture commentary featuring Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and the film's director, and that's it! While the PiP commentary is at times entertaining, it has a fairly limited appeal and will only be worth investigating by hard-core fans of the film.

Baby Mama Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Baby Mama is a cute, occasionally hilarious and ultimately forgettable comedy. I was really hoping that the talents of Amy Poehler and Tina Fey would have brought a bit more to the project, but the end result really bears the mark of a film that both actresses had little creative input into. Elevating every scene that he is in, Steve Martin really is the bright spot of the film. His scenes really liven the movie up and his character really is the most memorable aspect of the film. On the audio and video front, Baby Mama is, again, an average affair. I was impressed with the solid transfer of the film, but a lack of pop or any real visual flair just relegates the film to the middle ground of current Blu-ray presentations. Supplements are practically non-existant in this offering with only a Picture-in-Picture commentary present to feed the appetites of those who crave a multitude of supplemental features. Ultimately, Baby Mama is a forgettable experience that does offer 99 minutes of distraction from what might be an otherwise boring night of network television.