Baby Mamma 12A

By Robbie Collin

BABY Mama is an expression from Jamaica that’s short for “mother of baby”.

OK. Does that make this film “Pants Pile?”

It’s about a businesswoman (Tina Fey) and chavvy surrogate mum (Amy Poehler)—and drops the ball more often than a one-armed juggler.

Tina wrote the fantastic Mean Girls and recreates all that magic here . . . with the exception of characters, plot, jokes and everything else.

The film centres on successful career gal Kate Holbrook, who can’t get pregnant. She’s tried improving her diet and expensive fertility treatment, whereas what she REALLY needs is to have unprotected sex once with the hunky bloke she meets about ten minutes into the film.

But of course Kate doesn’t realise this until nearly the end of the film. In the meantime she hires a wacky surrogate with help from Sigourney Weaver—and three trimesters of thunderously unfunny high-jinks ensues.

Lowest of the low points include a black doorman on hand to provide some ill-thought-out and borderline racist “social satire”. And a truly awful Steve Martin cameo as Tina’s hippy boss.

Which only goes to prove that Steve Martin with a pony-tail doesn’t really look any more or less of a twerp than Steve Martin without a pony tail.