Maybe I just saw the coming-attractions trailer too often. By the time I finally saw Baby Mama, I felt a little bit like Yogi Berra. Since the trailer, which has been running in theaters since Christmas, contains most of the film's biggest laughs, it was deja vu all over again. Several times throughout the course of the movie I had to keep reminding myself that, no, I hadn't really seen Baby Mama before; it just felt that way.

If you've laughed, giggled or grinned at the same potty (Amy Poehler squats in the bathroom sink to pee because Tina Fey has prematurely baby-proofed the toilet) and biological time clock jokes 20 or 30 times, watching them play out within the context of the actual film (set-up, delivery, guffaw) can seem a tad anti-climactic, and considerably less funny. Not surprisingly, the stuff that made me laugh the hardest was (unintentionally?) left out of the ubiquitous trailer. For example, you can't tell by the previews that Sigourney Weaver's scarily fertile baby broker is a hoot. Or that Steve Martin has a very amusing extended cameo as Fey's new age-y millionaire boss.

Although Fey (30 Rock, Mean Girls) is one of the smartest comedy writers in the business, she didn't write the Baby Mama script, and that could be part of the movie's problem. (First-time director Michael McCullers, another SNL veteran, penned the hit-and-miss screenplay.) Kate Holbrook, a successful 37-year-old Philadelphia businesswoman who decides that it's time to have a baby, sounds like a perfect match for Fey. Yet Kate lacks the comic specificity and delectable spunkiness of Liz Lemon, Fey's single career woman from 30 Rock, and she even comes across as sort of bland and ordinary. Whether it's a male writer versus female writer thing, I'm not certain.

McCullers also blows a good chunk of the audience's goodwill by forcing his characters into stock situations that practically scream of creative desperation. The best thing here is the odd-couple friendship between Kate and trailer park ditz/surrogate mom Angie (Poehler), but McCullers consistently undermines it by diluting their charming female bonding with subplots (e.g., Kate's slow-burning romance with juice-bar guy Rob, wanly played by Greg Kinnear) that aren't particularly interesting and that we never truly care about. He even includes an irony-free, groan-inducing montage of a cutesy Kate-Rob date that seems lifted from about a hundred other romantic comedies.

Poehler again proves her mettle as a gifted physical comedienne (Fey's comic talent is more verbal), and Dax Shepard has some bright moments as Angie's dickwad common-law husband. Two of my favorite TV actresses (Maura Tierney and Holland Taylor) are squandered in the thankless roles of Kate's mom and sister, respectively. The film's most consistently engaging character is Kate's unflappable doorman (Romany Malco, best known as one of Steve Carrell's workplace buddies in The 40-Year-Old Virgin). Malco proves that even the most malnourished part can be a scene-stealer if you've got mad comic skills. Thanks to the overfamiliarity of many of its gags (that damn trailer again!) and McCullers' flaccid, juiceless direction, this 96-minute movie feels about as long as your typical Judd Apatow ass-buster. Or, as quip maven Berra might have put it, Baby Mama isn't too long, it just seems like it is. - Milan Paurich

Baby Mama **1/2
Opens Friday areawide

88 Minutes *1/2

Even the title is bogus. Twenty minutes (give or take) longer than its moniker's promised run time, 88 Minutes blows a lot of hot air before finally succumbing to a case of terminal silliness. This long-on-the-shelf Al Pacino stinker (it was released on home video early last year in some foreign markets) can't seem to make up its mind whether it wants to be a sleazy, torture-porn flick or the kind of tough urban crime melodrama Pacino used to excel in. The schizophrenic end result isn't likely to satisfy fans of either genre.

Directed by Jon Avnet (Fried Green Tomatoes, Up Close & Personal), the film stars Pacino as Dr. Jack Gramm, a celebrity forensic psychiatrist whose testimony helped convict serial killer Jon Forster (Neal McDonough) nine years earlier. On the same day "Seattle Slayer" Forster is scheduled to be executed, Gramm receives a phone call informing him that he has - you guessed it - 88 minutes to live. The fact that a recent murder shares Forster's MO has the feds (led by the always amusing William Forsythe) wondering if the perp is a copycat psycho or Gramm himself. Forster - who has a lot of time on his hands for someone on death row - seems to be calling all the shots behind bars. Hmmm. Can you say "Hannibal Lecter"? Pacino uses his character's "death sentence" as an excuse to do some of the most blatant scenery-chewing of his career. Not that you can blame him. With a sub-Law and Order screenplay - credited to Gary Scott Thompson - as criminally inept as this one, the Oscar-winning actor probably figured that if he yelled loudly (and often) enough it might distract from the script's jaw-dropping implausibilities. Either that or he was just trying to stay awake between camera set-ups.

The biggest mystery of 88 Minutes has nothing to do with the laughable, jerry-built plot, however. What's most baffling is that Avnet somehow managed to convince Pacino to re-up for his next directing gig (the forthcoming Righteous Kill) after showing him the final cut. I'm guessing that it must have been the lure of working with Robert DeNiro again - their first onscreen pairing since Michael Mann's Heat - that did the trick. - MP

Flawless **1/2

If it weren't for another fine performance by Michael Caine, Flawless would be your typical, by-the-numbers heist movie. Director Michael Radford (The Merchant of Venice, Il Postino) does a fine job with this period piece, set in 1960s London. He's got the swinging jazz soundtrack, the extravagant fashions and the stringent class structure down pat. But something about it just seems rote. The miscasting of Demi Moore as the film's central character doesn't help matters.

The movie's framed as a flashback, a device that seems a bit extraneous, especially since it involves making Moore look like an elderly woman with the help of a pretty second-rate make-up job, I might add. A young reporter doing a feature article on strong, independent women meets Laura Quinn (Moore), a former executive at the London Diamond Corporation, to include her in the puff piece she's writing. She gets more than she bargained for, however, when Laura starts to discuss her past. Passed over one too many times for a promotion, Laura had started to become disgruntled when Hobbs (Caine), the friendly nighttime janitor, approaches her with a modest proposal. He has a plan for how he can steal a thermos full of diamonds. Initially, Laura is suspicious that Hobbs simply has the hots for her. But he assures her that that's not the case, and she reluctantly goes along with the scheme.

By relying upon Hobbs' invisibility as the cleaner and getting the timing just right, they are able to pull off the heist. Only problem is, Hobbs steals more than just a thermos full of diamonds. The execs at the corporation are shocked and hire an investigator who immediately targets Laura (she starts acting nervous once she realizes the scope of the crime). To avoid the persistent Detective Finch (Lambert Wilson), she has to do some scheming of her own to avoid getting caught. The film's ending isn't completely predictable, and Laura and Hobbs have a head-to-head before all's said and done. While Caine is terrific at showing Hobbs' nuances (he's not as simple-minded as he appears), Moore doesn't really make Laura into a compelling character. And why she had to adopt a weak British accent to play a character that's an American ex-pat is beyond me. - Jeff Niesel

Opens Friday at the Cedar Lee Theatre