It would be a lie to state that our main priority nowadays is anything else but our career.

We see this tendency manifesting mostly among the young; it’s easy to observe twenty-something people in the morning, detached from the real world, focused only on their cup of coffee on their way to work and we see them late in the evening returning home, same way, same detachment, dreaming eyes-wide open about their pillow.

It is they who wake up in their late thirties single, craving desperately for a family. There is no doubt that they are professionally-accomplished and their job brought them enough satisfaction in order to forget about the ordinary course of life, but at a certain moment of time they feel the need to become from professionals something more common, like parents.

This is the drama depicted humorously by a new comedy that opens today in theatres, “Baby Mama.” The comedy focuses on a career woman who feels that her biological clock ceased ticking subtly and it is on the verge of ringing, announcing that her time is up. Our protagonist, 37-year old Kate (played by “30 Rock’s” Tina Fey) is determined to approach motherhood, only to discover, to her great disappointment, that she stands more chances to win the lottery than to get pregnant.

As she is not interested at all in winning the lottery, Kate searches for alternatives and finds the solution at a pricey surrogacy center run by much- too-fertile Chaffee (Sigourney Weaver) in exchange of one hundred thousand dollars. Given the circumstances and the movie genre, implanting Kate’s lab-fertilized eggs into a surrogate mother seems more suitable than adopting, as it implies the blend of medical (professionalism) and biological (motherhood).

The intrigue of the plot is Kate’s meeting Angie (Amy Poehler of “Saturday Night Live”). Angie is a brittle blond, coming from the working-class, whose manners will generate headaches in Kate and laughs in the audience. Angie’s breakup with her idiot common-law husband (Dax Shepard) brings the two of them living together in Kate’s classy apartment. To cut the story short, the vice president at a natural food supermarket chain in Philadelphia meets and lives with the slacker.  

Even though the gap between the two women is large and deep enough to make us wonder why, if she had already paid that huge sum of money, Kate didn’t ask for somebody else, Kate and Angie click. Their relationship has its bumps, like Angie’s eating junk food habits or spending/wasting her time playing video games, but there are moments when the two really hit it off.

The movie also has an amusement-generator in Kate’s boss, played by Steve Martin. Sporting a ponytail reminiscent New Age, Barry is a mixture of eccentricity and egocentrism, drawing bursts of laughs when he rewards his employees with five whole minutes of gazing into his eyes. Also, Oscar (Romany Malco of “The 40-Year-Old Virgin”) is the doorman who always shares pieces of his wisdom with the others. Kate’s love interest is Rob (Greg Kinnear), the owner of a smoothie shop who is worried that the Whole Foods-like supermarket chain for which she works will irreversibly change the face of the neighborhood.   

Even though charming, “Baby Mama” will give its audience a continuous sensation of deja-vu. Elements from “Parenthood” and “Baby Boom” are spread throughout the comedy, Kate and Angie’s living together is a replica of “The Odd Couple” and Kate and Rob’s love story is remindful of “You’ve Got Mail.” The adventures of the two women were written and directed by Michael McCullers.   

“Baby Mama” is a charming story, not exceedingly funny, but amusing enough to leave at least smiles on the faces of moviegoers.