courtesy of Universal Pictures Single businesswoman Kate Holbrook, played by Tina Fey (left) attends Lamaze with her surrogate mother, the slightly white-trash Angie Ostrowiski, played by Amy Poehler, in ‘Baby Mama.’

It's a shame when one feels uninspired to write a review for a movie. That is my situation with "Baby Mama," the new comedy starring Saturday Night Live (SNL) veterans Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. It's a film that lacks the sharp punch of being funny, bordering on blandness.

"Baby Mama" is the sort of movie that die-hard SNL fans root for, especially those that think there isn't enough recognition for Fey's uber-smart remarks and Poehler's no-reservations comedy. But those sorts of fans will be sadly disappointed by all the baby mama drama occurring in "Baby Mama."

The synopsis sounds funny enough: Kate (Fey) is 37, successful, single, and wants a baby very, very badly. In the opening scenes, she creepily smells one baby while standing in an elevator. And she accidentally walks in on a "Mommy and Me" yoga class, as mothers lift their cherubic little infants serenely in the air in a synchronized manner.

After trying and failing at artificial insemination and adoption, and being told by that nerdy PC guy from the Mac commercials (John Hodgman) that her uterus is a piece of junk, she decides to try surrogate motherhood. Through a hoity-toity fertility clinic, Angie (Poehler) is chosen to be the "baby mama," a term coined by Kate's wisecracking doorman (Romany Malco).

Angie happens to be the polar opposite of Kate. Her diet consists of Tastycakes and Dr. Pepper, she loves playing the American Idol karaoke video game, she has a deadbeat husband, played terribly by the sometimes funny Dax Shepard, and she wears bootie shorts and blue toenail polish. Who knows why the slightly uptight Kate chooses the slightly white-trash Angie as her baby mama, but lo and behold, here are the makings of a funny film, with a duo that is reminiscent of Laverne and Shirley, Lucy and Ethel, or Tom and Jerry, as the film suggests.

No doubt, Fey and Poehler make a great pair onscreen, however basic their character types are. One of the funniest scenes in the movie is when Kate is trying to make Angie take a huge prenatal vitamin. Angie acts like a five-year-old, spitting up water and food in the attempt to swallow the humungous pill. In another scene, when the two go out clubbing, Fey looks awkward on the dance floor, doing the "face-framing move," and Poehler bumps and grinds, despite her pregnant belly.

The two actresses are great in such antics-filled scenes, displaying their physical comedy and great chemistry. But there are too few scenes of that nature in "Baby Mama." What could have been a ballsy comedy turns into a regular old chick flick, which is nothing but lackluster. The viewer will feel swindled when forced to sit through a film about the woes of women and pregnancy with a few light laughs thrown in here and there.

But it cannot be denied that "Baby Mama" has a well-assembled cast. Besides Fey and Poehler, there is Steve Martin as Fey's hippy-dippy boss, the head of a health food chain store. Greg Kinnear is Fey's charming love interest. Sigourney Weaver appears as the annoyingly fertile head of the fertility clinic. And as mentioned before, there is Malco, who may be fondly remembered as being offensively funny in "The 40-Year-Old Virgin."

Bottom line: "Baby Mama" is not bad. But it's not good, either. In the recently overdone funny-movies-about-pregnancy genre ("Knocked Up," "Juno," etc.), "Baby Mama" is just too one-dimensional to deserve any positive recognition.

Plot........... .......B
Acting........ ......A-
Comedy.............B-
Overall...............B