Hollywood Takes Notice: Here They Come, The Late Blooming Mom Movies!

This weekend brings the opening of not one but two -- count 'em, two -- whole movies centered around women who want to -- or inadvertently become -- late-blooming moms. Given that the movie industry (in which I'm a tiny cog, part of a giant movie machine) has been largely blind to the phenomenon of women becoming later in life mothers, this is cause for rejoicing. Now let's hope they're actually good.

My money's on Tina Fey and Amy Poehler's BABY MAMA to deliver on its promise. It's a comedy about a 37-year-old career women with a tilted uterus that means she can't get pregnant ... so she hires another woman to carry her baby. Early reviews have been good, and word has it this channels the spirit of the classic Neil Simon play and movie THE ODD COUPLE, with a gender-bending twist, and a more contemporary spirit. Supposedly Fey's character is not some cold-hearted, ambitious to the point of being a bitch career gal, but rather a much more realistic, warm and hard-working gal who is bumping up against infertility, and is smart enough and financially able to do something about it. This being a movie, I understand she also gets some romance in the form of Greg Kinnear. Apparently Sigourney Weaver is spot-on funny as the head of the surrogate pregnancy firm that puts the leads together, and Steve Martin does a hysterical star turn as the head of a crunchy granola food company where Fey works. John Hodgeman, egghead of THE DAILY SHOW, is the ob/gyn.

BABY MAMA is high on my want-to-see list, mostly because it sounds funny, but also because it's a high profile movie dealing with things like infertility, juggling career and the desire for mom-hood, and the fact that a lot of us don't come to mom-hood until after 35. It's about time we had a movie of our own. I don't guarantee it'll be good since I haven't seen it, but I hope it'll generate enough box office to convince the industry it's time for more movies with 35+ female leads and dealing with real issues. Check out the trailer for BABY MAMA here.

The other movie dealing with the later-in-life longing for mom-hood is THEN SHE FOUND ME, starring -- and directed by -- Helen Hunt, who was funny and endearing on TV's MAD ABOUT YOU, but has been kinda brittle and hard to take in the movies. She seems a bit warmer this time in the trailer (let's hope it's true in the whole film). Apparently in this movie, based on a novel by Elinor Lipman (a popular chick lit author), she plays a teacher left by her immature husband (played by MATTHEW BRODERICK), only to wind up pregnant by him when he briefly comes back, only by the time she realizes it, she's fallen for an irresistible single dad (COLIN FIRTH), whose kid she teaches. She's also adopted, and finds out her real mom is an advice-giving talk show host (played by BETTE MIDLER). I gotta admit, the supporting players are the bigger draw for me here -- who doesn't wanna fall in love with Colin Firth or hear Bette Midler be a brassy talk show host? Check out the trailer for THEN SHE FOUND ME here.

Full disclosure: I don't work for the companies behind EITHER of these movies, and had nothing to do with them professionally. I'm just a Late Blooming Mom happy that Hollywood has finally taken notice of us, at last.