BABY MAMA [PG-13]

Tina Fey has carved out a niche as the most endearing comical everywoman since Mary Tyler Moore tossed her hat into the air. But while Moore was never quite able to break out of that mold, Fey has additional trick up her sleeve — she can just write characters for herself.

Fey has proven a capable writer and actress on television in “30 Rock” and film as a teacher in Mean Girls. Now trying to show how that she could be a marquee name she is headlining the new comedy Baby Mama with old friend Amy Poehler.

Fey plays a variation of the same persona she plays on television. This time however, she plays a Whole Foods-esque executive named Kate who has always put her career before her personal life. But now at 37, she is hearing her biological clock ticking and decides that she wants to have a baby even though she is single. After failed attempts at in vitro, she hires unlikely surrogate Angie (Poehler) to carry her baby.

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HAROLD & KUMAR ESCAPE FROM GUANTANAMO BAY [R]

Holding up for ridicule the stone-cold silliness of our blind faith in post-9/11 legislation like the U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, this extreme road comedy, a sequel to the 2004 stoner favorite Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle, is a rapid-fire Cheech & Chong meet The Blues Brothers in South Park kind of envelope-pusher. In it, best buds Harold Lee (John Cho) and Kumar Patel (Kal Penn) find themselves detained in Cuba for an alleged hijacking attempt while en route to the amateur pharmacologist’s providence of Amsterdam. Naturally, they escape, as the movie is not called Harold & Kumar Are Routinely Humiliated, Stripped Of Their Basic Human Rights And Detained Indefinitely At Guantanamo Bay (though don’t be surprised if some Middle Eastern countries actually release it with that title). High jinks and social satire ensue. And plenty of low jinks and gross-outs.

Penn, who is now a (most welcome) part of the cast of Fox’s hit medical drama “House,” keeps it all moving along. He’s got super timing and a natural charisma (though even that did not save the grotesquely cheesy spoof that was Epic Movie). His hyper-intelligent would-be doctor is a THC-tweaked Ferris Bueller, and we want to see him and unflinching straight man Cho get into shit, just so we can watch them get out again. The supporting cast includes “Daily Show” correspondent Rob Corddry, who is hilariously stupid as a dim-bulb FBI agent, and lovely giant funny girl Missi Pyle (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) as a backwoods Barbie. Neil Patrick Harris (”How I Met Your Mother”) returns as a riotously funny drug-craving, sex-obsessed version of Neil Patrick Harris (and fans should stay through the end credits). Special kudos go to James Adomian, late-night TV host Craig Ferguson’s go-to guy to play the President. Here, in an extended and pivotal sketch, he simultaneously pulls off silly, serious and surreal, which, like the movie itself, comes across as much more than just an easy, short-sighted gimmick. And any movie that can support its entire weight on the geeky brilliance of a climactic love poem called “The Square Root Of Three” cannot be all that brain-dead.

Ultimately, the movie is: Coarse (and that’s intended) and very often, naughty (fraught with drugs and nudity and sitting on the potty); Disrespectful, brassy, crude - it’s all these things (with pride), patently ridiculous and flip…and rank…and snide. And written with a bong in reach (as far as we can tell), but, despite this laundry list, it’s funny as all hell.••• –Robert Newton

DEAL [R]

Card movies are always a tough sell. How do you make a lively, interesting film out of a poker game or, more often, a poker tournament? Even movies that make use of card games as a device in passing, or as a metaphor to add suspense because everything rides on the hand the hero is dealt, or to show us what a coolly unflappable guy the protagonist is – risk killing momentum if a poker scene goes on too long: witness the latest James Bond film, Casino Royale, a tough and gritty production that nearly stalled when Bond spent a little too much time at the table.

But card movies are always cropping up, one here – last year’s Lucky You – or two there, as with 21 and, now, Deal.

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DECEPTION [R]

When mild mannered, unattached auditor Jonathan McQuarry (Ewan McGregor) meets man about town corporate lawyer Wyatt Bose (Hugh Jackman), he is drawn into a world of secret rendezvous with beautiful and successful women who want “intimacy without intricacy” in their busy lives. Just as the novelty almost wears off, Jonathan falls for one of these mysterious women, he knows only as S (Michelle Williams). After she disappears mysteriously, leaving blood stains behind in their hotel room, Jonathan discovers that Wyatt is not what he seems and Jonathan’s professional access to his next corporate client’s secret accounts hold the key to getting S back.

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EXPELLED: NO INTELLIGENCE ALLOWED [PG]

Rocky Mountain Pictures, the distributor of conservative political commentator Ben “Something D-O-O Economics?” Stein’s Darwin-bashing alleged documentary, missed a big merchandising opportunity. For the ambitious 1,000+ screen release of their independent offering, they could have created a whole line of branded baby rattles, pacifiers and disposable diapers with the iconic “Origin of the Species” author’s face on the inside, considering how much infantile wah! wah! wah! and pooping-upon there is going on.

The severely unbalanced film serves as a defense for the supposed grand conspiracy to fire college academics who profess any kind of support for the idea of Intelligent Design, or “I.D.,” a multi-syllabic way of saying, “God is responsible for all the things we haven’t figured out yet.” Interviews with some of these slighted professors and researchers are largely one-note, and Stein’s blind support of them ignores one major unspoken truth - that mentioning in the same breath the mutually exclusive concepts of God (which trades on faith) and science (which is based on facts) is the academic equivalent to pulling out one’s pee-pee on a playground.

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ALIEN NATION: ULTIMATE MOVIE COLLECTION [NR]

It would seem that intelligent and well-written science fiction series like “Alien Nation” (1989-90), based on “V” creator Kenneth Johnson’s 1988 sci-noir film that starred James Caan as an L.A. cop paired with Mandy Patinkin’s alien “Newcomer” for a partner, are naturally short-lived. Ask any fan of “Buffy” papa Joss Whedon’s half-season of the space western, “Firefly,” which network Fox also didn’t know what to do with. A testament to the legs of Johnson’s creation was the fact that four years after cancellation, the stronger and more experienced Fourth Network brought the show back in the form of five TV movies, all gathered in this compact but meaty 2-disc box set. But don’t let the slimness fool you. Each movie comes with a full-length commentary, and there are not only four making-of featurettes, but also the warm-and-fuzzy 2007 reunion taped at Johnson’s house, entitled “A Family Gathering - A Retrospective” (see below for additional special features).

The five movies - Dark Horizon (1994), Body and Soul (1995), Millennium (1996), The Enemy Within (1996) and The Udara Legacy (1997) - pick up where the series left off, and detail the further exploits of Detective Matthew Sikes (Gary Graham) and his Newcomer partner George Francisco (Eric Pierpoint). Like the series, each movie is alternately fun and serious, is heavily character-driven and explores - with mixed results - the Big Issues of Racism, Bigotry and Immigration. Even when the story lines are not fresh, the alien culture becomes less alien with each film, until the Newcomers drinking sour milk to get drunk and dining on raw rodent meat is no longer a novelty, instead being just something that these bald, spotty-headed people do (and their mating rituals are even hotter than Klingon sex). Although the metaphorical posturing is occasionally heavy-handed (like Johnson’s Holocaust parable “V” was) the writing is still smarter than the boilerplate buddy cop shows that “Alien Nation,” at first glance, resembles. Sci-fi fans aching after the loss of “Battlestar Galactica” should rent the 22 episodes of the series and these 5 films, and fans of the show can presently pick both sets up for under $50 on Amazon.com (no endorsement implied). –Robert Newton

*SPECIAL FEATURES: Kenneth Johnson commentary on all 5 features; photo galleries; gag reels; 4 making-of featurettes; 25-minute reunion featurette “A Family Gathering - A Retrospective”

For filmmaker Rob Stewart, the director of the exciting new documentary Sharkwater, exploring sharks began as an underwater adventure. What it turned into was a beautiful and dangerous life journey into the balance of life on earth. Driven by passion fed from a lifelong fascination with sharks, Stewart debunks historical stereotypes and media depictions of sharks as bloodthirsty, man-eating monsters and reveals the reality of sharks as pillars in the evolution of the seas.

Win a copy of this acclaimed documentary on DVD by answering the following question:

What was the nickname the crew of Steven Spielberg’s ‘Jaws’ gave the glitch-ridden mechanical shark?

Send your answer to RNewton (at) PagioInc.com no later than Sunday, April 27th at 11:59pm. Winners will be selected at random from all correct entries and notified by e-mail.

FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL [R]

Everyone has had their heart broken by someone they thought they’d be with forever. No matter how much we try to get over that person, there is nothing we can do to escape from things that remind us of them. With the release of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, those suffering from a broken heart get the first comedy to which they honestly can relate.

After being suddenly dumped by his famous girlfriend Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell), Peter Bretter (Jason Segel) falls into a pit of loneliness and misery. In an attempt to heal, he decides to go on vacation. But things go from bad to worse when Peter escapes to Hawaii and ends up staying at the same hotel as Sarah and her rocker boyfriend. Thankfully, he meets a friendly receptionist to keep him company while on the island.

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THE FORBIDDEN KINGDOM [PG-13]

When Michael Mann paired up masters thespian Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in the action thriller Heat in 1995, audiences expected sparks to fly. However, when the two shared but a single scene, fans anticlimaxed in a way that would not be matched for another four years when George Lucas officially ended the childhoods of millions with the epic colonic Star Wars prequel, The Phantom Menace. Here, though, with someone finally having the sense to team Hong Kong action greats Jackie Chan and Jet Li, the result is quite the opposite. Not only do they trade barbs for much of the second half of the film, but they also actually fight each other. For most regular movie fans, seeing the two go at it may be a pleasant novelty, but for the kung-fu faithful, it is a moment akin to Al Jolson dropping the now-famous words, “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet,” in The Jazz Singer eight decades ago.

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THE BAND’S VISIT [PG-13]

The Alexandria Police Ceremonial Orchestra has arrived in Israel to perform at the inauguration of the Arab Cultural Center, but no one is there to meet them. Their leader, Lt.-Col. Tawfiq Zacharya (Sasson Gabai), refuses to call the Egyptian Embassy for help. Instead, his stubborn refusal prompts them to find their own way to their destination. They end up in a tiny Israeli town in the middle of nowhere where absolutely nothing goes on. That is, until they meet feisty, friendly Dina (Ronit Elkabetz), the owner of what appears to be the only restaurant in town and they communicate in the only language common between them: English.

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