What do you make of this excerpt from this review? I mean, I’m not here to be a Baby Mama apologist, because I haven’t even seen it. But don’t I object to…many things about this? Am I taking it the wrong way?
Greg Kinnear also shows up now and again as Kate’s inevitable love interest, perhaps so things don’t overheat when Angie moves in. Not that anyone need worry about this female odd couple, given that Ms. Fey, who doesn’t have the acting chops that might invest her character with some personality, has been forced to play it straight and narrow. The close-up medium of television is more forgiving of those comics who tend to stand in the middle of the frame as if they had just been planted. But unlike Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, Ms. Fey doesn’t even have a funny voice.
That’s too bad, because she is genuinely funny. And if there’s anything the movies could use it is funny women, especially those who earn laughs by keeping their clothes on and their dignity (more or less) intact. Under the old Hollywood system, the studio boss might have ordered up a dance coach for Ms. Fey, maybe a few lessons on how to walk across a set or move her upper body once in a while. She might not have been able to rip loose as a writer-performer, which makes the idea of her developing a simultaneous on-and-off-screen presence all the more tantalizing. Real funny women — Mae West, Elaine May — come along every few decades, so the timing seems right. But the clock is ticking.
Maybe you can all help me understand it.
