Once again the small screen comes to the big screen and guess what? It's still a small screen with a small story. But we get Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, and that's not entirely bad news.

We know and love Fey from "Saturday Night Live" and her own show "30 Rock," and we sat in the big dark expecting more of the same. It turns out, as it often does, that Tina does not come alive in the big dark. Some living room comics do, like Steve Carell, and some don't.

In the new comedy "Baby Mama" Tina gives us Kate, a swell looking, Donna Karan-suited, corporate-climbing, four-on-the-floor-power woman who runs an organic food conglomerate. This, in the real world, would be Whole Foods.

Kate is the V.P. for an aging hippie who won't grow up and give up, and has built a trillion dollar business selling $10 tomatoes. This, of course, is Steve Martin in an hilarious pony tail and designer jeans playing "Barry" who blesses all his new stores with Apache Indian smoke and would rather be swimming with the dolphins in Mexico than selling arugula. Steve's in and out cameo here is a solid reason not to miss this movie.

But we need a complication, and so we get Kate having a "Oh-no-I-forgot-to-have-a-baby" moment. What she'll do with it in her 24/7 Jet Blue-Blackberry world is another story.

Uh-oh! Kate's tubes and connections don't work, and she can't conceive. So, after paying $100,000 to a futuristic, state-of-the-art-uptown-fertility guru (Signouney Weaver having a good time) to find her the perfect body to carry her eggs, voila! We get Angie Ostrowiski, a tattooed-strip-mall beautician and that would be the second funniest woman in America, Amy Poehler, a blonde comedian who does Hillary better than Hillary on "SNL."

Angie and her room-temperature-IQ boyfriend arrive at the door like refugees from a trailer park fire. When things go sour with Angie and her Carl, Amy moves into Kate's state-of-the-art apartment in an upscale Philly neighborhood. Is this looking familiar "Odd Couple" fans?

Kate, of course, takes baby making seriously, even if Angie is in it only for the $10 grand. Did you know this business was so expensive? Angie has never met a piece of junk food she doesn't love, and Kate is an obsessive compulsive clean and neat looney. There will now be neat-meets-slob jokes and pre-natal video games. Pause here to praise a great comic performance by Siobhan Fallon as a lisping earth mother birthing teacher.

OK, now you get it, and that's about it. Nothing ground breaking here, but this is Tina World and there are plenty of laughs. You just have to stop waiting for it to turn into a comedy classic and enjoy yourself.

We do get Greg Kinnear as an independent juice bar owner trying to stay alive in a "Jamba Juice" world. Of course Greg and Tina lock eyes and bounce off of one another's skewed viewpoints, which gives off very few sparks but provides a couple of sweet moments.

Fey is, of course, a brilliant comedy writer and not bad in playing it, but Amy Poehler is a born scene stealer who grabs each frame with both hands and runs. Nobody else gets a laugh when she's on screen.

Add the great Steve Martin to the mix, and you're left wondering why someone didn't just leave Tina and Greg to smooch and make a better movie with Amy and Steve.

J.P. Devine is a former stage and screen actor.