Weekend of May 4, 2008

Box Office

1 new Iron Man 1 $100.8M $104.3M $24.5k 4105 94% 2 new Made of Honor 1 $15.5M $15.5M $5.7k 2729 13% 3 1 Baby Mama 2 $10.3M $32.3M $4.1k 2548 61% 4 4 Forgetting Sarah Marshall 3 $6.1M $44.8M $2.1k 2872 85% 5 2 Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay 2 $6M $25.3M $2.4k 2545 55% 6 3 Forbidden Kingdom 3 $4.2M $45.1M $1.4k 2960 62% 7 5 Nim’s Island 5 $2.8M $42.5M $1.1k 2478 48% 8 6 Prom Night 4 $2.5M $41.4M $1k 2434 9% 9 7 21 6 $2.1M $79.1M $0.9k 2242 31% 10 8 88 Minutes 3 $1.6M $15.4M $0.9k 1765 6% 11 9 Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who! 8 $1.4M $149.8M $0.9k 1463 78% 12 10 Deception 2 $0.9M $4M $0.4k 2001 12%

Source: Rotten Tomatoes

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Hey, this is how I start writing, too!

Fans of 30 Rock and devotees of Tina Fey should know an important detail before buying a ticket for Baby Mama: The comedy, co-starring Fey and Saturday Night Live’s Amy Poehler, was not written by the current It Scribe. Expectedly, then, it’s rarely as laugh-out-loud funny as Fey’s TV series or even the duo’s previous big-screen pairing, 2004’s Mean Girls (which Fey did write). But compared to the usual SNL-goes-to-the-movies train wrecks—or, say, Made of Honor—this pleasant, relatively original film is a comedy master class.

And surely writer-director Michael McCullers (a screenwriter for the Austin Powers series) let his stars have some fun with his odd-couple story about surrogacy. Kate (Fey) is a 37-year-old executive of an organic-foods market who wants to have a child “now.” With no man in her life, low odds of getting approved to adopt, and an oddly shaped uterus that her fertility doctor “just doesn’t like,” Kate decides that her only option is to find what her doorman, Oscar (The 40-Year-Old Virgin’s Romany Malco), has a ready slang term for: “You pay the bills, she has the baby—that’s called a baby mama. Ask any man in Philadelphia.”

After a meeting with an ironically fertile surrogacy agent (Sigourney Weaver, gamely making herself the target of age jokes), Kate is introduced to Angie (Poehler), a trashy junk-food inhaler whose only motivation in carrying someone else’s kid is the paycheck. When Angie leaves her deadbeat boyfriend (Dax Shepard), Kate takes her in, and both of the women’s prenatal glow dims as they get to know each other. (Angie, for instance, declares she’d “rather get hit in the face” than indulge in Kate’s stockpile of healthy food.)

Fey mostly plays it straight here, though her Kate is not above translating a birthing coach’s instructions to “pwep your perwanium with EVOO”—yes, she’s got a Baba Wawa speech impediment, and it’s childish but still kinda amusing—as, “I think she wants me to rub olive oil on your taint.” But Poehler, who’s often grating in her SNL skits, pulls off the funniest bits here: Angie’s fake-out offer of gas money to Kate is brilliant, and Poehler spits—food, vitamins, more food—like a pro. And Juno MacGuff, for all her logorrheic wisecrackery, could never yell out a more believable labor line than “It feels like I’m shittin’ a knife!”

Even Kate’s requisite budding relationship (the suitor played by Greg Kinnear) is sharply drawn, particularly a terrific scene that highlights the universal moment when a casual remark can make a person previously blushing with puppy love suddenly want to run for the door. Like most of Baby Mama, it’s not gut-busting. But after a parade of romantic comedies that shoot one-liners with machine guns or twist circumstances to contrivance, it’s a relief to enjoy a story that just feels natural.

Weekend of April 27, 2008

Box Office

1 new Baby Mama 1 $18.3M $18.3M $7.2k 2543 60% 2 new Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay 1 $14.6M $14.6M $5.8k 2510 57% 3 1 Forbidden Kingdom 2 $11.2M $38.3M $3.6k 3151 63% 4 2 Forgetting Sarah Marshall 2 $11M $35.1M $3.9k 2799 85% 5 5 Nim’s Island 4 $4.5M $39M $1.5k 2977 48% 6 3 Prom Night 3 $4.4M $38.1M $1.6k 2821 9% 7 6 21 5 $4M $75.8M $1.4k 2952 31% 8 4 88 Minutes 2 $3.6M $12.6M $1.7k 2168 6% 9 8 Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who! 7 $2.4M $147.9M $1.1k 2159 78% 10 new Deception 1 $2.2M $2.2M $1.1k 2001 12% 11 7 Street Kings 3 $2.1M $23.7M $1.2k 1735 33% 12 9 Leatherheads 4 $1.8M $29.3M $0.8k 2255 53%

Source: Rotten Tomatoes

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