In these days where technology and societal norms challenge the traditional notion of child-rearing and motherhood, the arrival of Baby Mama would suggest a great potential for a modern comedy. With the presence of leads of super-hot Tina Fey and Amy Poehler (who were just featured in a Vanity Fair cover story on great female comediennes), that potential could be fully fleshed out for a rollicking good time.

Tragically, the film decides to rely on tired sitcom formulas and faux conflict to dodge anything edgy or daunting about contemporary situations. Fey plays Angie, the VP of a Philadelphia-based organic foods corporation. As a side note, her boss Barry is even more organic and Earthier than the food and, as played by Steve Martin, is a high light in the film. She’s always focused on being successful in her career but not necessarily in her personal life. Being 37, she decides she wants a baby. But nature conspires against fertilization and the legal system is too slow for adoption. Angie turns to a surrogate mother agency ran by the uber-fertile Sigourney Weaver. She is matched with Kate (Poehler), a class-less working class dud from Western PA. She seems genuine if lacking tact and poise while her “common law” husband Carl (Dax Shepard, playing a character dangerously close to the futuristic slack-jaw in Idiocracy) is really in it for the money. After a few minutes with these characters, one wonders how they cleared any background check instituted by the agency.

No bother since this seems to be the perfect set-up for writer-director Michael McCullers (who co-wrote the last two Austin Powers films with Mike Myers) to explore the nuances of upper class vs. working class in how it relates to parenting. A real class war, with feminine angst and culture upbringing thrown into the mix. Sadly, Baby Mama thinks it’s doing this by contriving the plot so these two must become roommates during the pregnancy. What McCullers tries to make into social commentary (although making Angie resort to calling Kate “white trash” in a pivotal moment hardly seems like ripping satire that cuts into the plot) is just another retread of The Odd Couple, with jokes about personal hygiene and making a mess out of personal living spaces. Honestly, do we need another comedy that has whole scenes where the uptight character has to feign horror at the eating habits of her less-healthy living companion? The only difference here is Fey has to add “…because you’re pregnant to the end of every line.” That’s not to say there are not a few funny lines in Baby Mama, but they don’t necessarily add anything insightful about the story.

It is tragic in a world of in vitro fertilization and complex legal issues that Baby Mama doesn’t have anything more interesting to say. Is this really any more different than films like Baby Boom or Look Who’s Talking when it comes to working women and babies? My Gosh, those movies came out twenty years ago! There’s a twist somewhere in the middle of the film where Kate reveals that she may not actually be pregnant that offers something interesting in the way of ethics or perhaps creating unique conflict. But it’s thrown away for the sake of sticking to its drab plot. Even a romantic love interest played by Greg Kinnear is given nothing more than a few lines that require Fey’s character to dump him just so they can get back together at the end. Whoops! Should I have said “spoiler alert”?

Perhaps what the film needed was Fey as a screenwriter. She has an ear for these types of characters and this script, as written by a dude, just doesn’t get the rhythm. While her tome for Mean Girls had some faults, she certainly made the audience keenly aware they were listening to real girls talk to one another about things that had real ramifications in their lives. But Baby Mama is not written by Fey and any funny moments created by the material have already been aired-out in television commercials and theatrical trailers. If you laughed then, watching Baby Mama full-out offers nothing new to the experience.

It’s rated PG-13 for crude and sexual humor, language and a drug reference.

1.5 Baby Boom + 1 30 Rock = 2.5 Baby Mama