Although I like Tina Fey from both Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock, my expectations for this movie were modest. But what appears in the previews to be only a gimmick comedy turns out to be, well, a really good gimmick comedy. Fey plays Kate, a successful executive for an organic food company run by Steve Martin in a hilarious turn as a new age guru who has had delicious salmon with native Americans and wants his new flagship store to capture the essence of a one-inch seashell. With her biological clock ticking, Kate feels the imperative of motherhood and turns to surrogacy when her uterus turns out to be inhospitable and the wait for adoption is years. Enter Poehler as Angie and her longtime boyfriend Carl. Angie agrees to carry Kate’s in vitro baby setting up a set of easy gags based on Kate’s type A personality with Angie, who “discontinued high school” and would rather watch America’s Funniest Home Videos than listen to foreign language CDs so Kate’s baby will be born bilingual.

But the movie, written and directed by Michael McCullers, actually gives the characters a story. Rather than being a drawn-out SNL segment, Baby Mama is a thoroughly enjoyable comedy with a plot as well as plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. Angie stumbles through an explanation of her presence in Kate’s apartment to Kate’s new boyfriend, saying “I live in an apartment in New York with her husband which I have” but they travel around visiting various stock exchanges. But, like most good comedies, most of the funny lines are intertwined with the story and cannot be easily pulled out of context.