I did pretty well on the English half of the SATs way back when, which means I was always good at word matrices and other matches sets of names and concepts. So if you asked me to complete a trio featuring Tina Fey and Amy Pohler I’d say Jane Krakowski or Isla Fisher, maybe even Portia de Rossi.

But not Sigourney Weaver.

Either Lorne Michaels is a lot better at that sort of thing than I am — I’m talking about working on a whole other plane of understanding — or he’s from the same dimension as Oscar winner Chris Kattan because that’s the group he’s got lined up for Baby Mama, a comedy in which Fey’s career woman hires Pohler as a surrogate mother to carry the baby she so desperately wants. In addition to being tall and commanding, Sigourney will be the head of the surrogate agency.

The pic is really the product of Michael McCullers, that chronicler of the human condition whose deep screenplay treatises Undercover Brother and Thunderbirds were misinterpreted by directors to the point where they count as The Mangler 3 and 4, respectively. (Everyone knows that The Mangler Reborn is really a gloss on the series, albeit one that fed Reggie Bannister for a week.)


Furthermore, will his contributions to the Austin Powers series ever be recognized for their enduring value? It’s true that the comedic value of a fat man tweaking his nipples is etched into our cultural lexicon, but what about McCullers’ bottomless capacity to conceal his anthropological inquiries in the dialogue of a midget and Michael Cane?

If Baby Mama lives up to it’s massive potential, that day may finally come.