Some actors will be forever linked to their most popular roles. That's the case for Arnold and the Terminator, Leonard Nimoy and Spock, or Christopher Reeve and Superman. For Sarah Jessica Parker, it's Carrie Bradshaw. As the glamorous and urbane New Yorker on HBO's Sex and the City, Parker launched her career into the stratosphere. It seems like she's constantly trying to recapture lightning in a bottle by playing variations of Carrie in pictures like Did You Hear About the Morgans?, New Year's Eve, and I Don't Know How She Does It.
In the latter film, Parker is Kate Reddy, a hedge fund manager in Boston, mother of two, and wife to a successful architect named Richard (Greg Kinnear). Kate's life is a delicate balancing act between her professional life and her responsibilities at home. Most of the time, the scales don't tip in the right direction and she misses out on things like her son's first haircut. Kate's maternal duties get pushed further back when her demanding boss (Kelsey Grammer) asks her to land a lucrative account with the phallically appropriate name of Jack Abelhammer (Pierce Brosnan). This new opportunity requires Kate to fly back and forth to New York City and even ditch Thanksgiving dinner for a last minute flight to the Big Apple.
Aside from a crushing schedule, Kate's primary adversaries are a sniveling co-worker (Seth Myers), who is just waiting for her to slip up, and a competitive "momster" (Busy Phillips), who can seemingly outdo everything Kate tries.
I Don't Know How She Does It was based on a best-selling novel by Allison Pearson. It was originally published in 2002 and given the seal of approval by Oprah Winfrey. The Weinstein Company got the rights and went with Aline Brosh McKenna to pen the screenplay. McKenna also adapted the workplace chick-lit comedy, The Devil Wears Prada as well as the similarly themed 27 Dresses and Morning Glory. Luckily, How She Does It isn't another story centered on a type-A working girl whose entire self-worth is based on finding a man. Unfortunately, it is a movie centered on a type-A working girl whose problems aren't a drop in the bucket in the real world.
Pearson's novel was written years before the current recession, which is almost never addressed at all in the film. The one and only reference to the economic crisis is a condescending scene in which Jack and Kate deign to grace the common masses by going bowling in Cleveland. One of the working class stiffs remarks to the former Bond that she'll forgive him for being a banker if he scores a strike. If only it were that easy…
Kate doesn't exactly elicit much sympathy for being a part of the financial sector. She and her husband are also upper middle-class and make a more than comfortable living with a beautiful home. I doubt mothers working three jobs and living in depressed neighborhoods will shed many tears for Kate when her most trying dilemma involves a case of head lice. Or how about the time Kate is forced to masquerade a store-bought pie as homemade for her daughter's bake sale. Oh, the horror.
McKenna and director Douglas McGrath (Emma, Infamous) exacerbate the smugness by intercutting pseudo-documentary interviews with the supporting characters as they emphasize the difficulties modern women face in the workplace. It's an irritating device that adds nothing to an already thin narrative.
If there is anything positive to be found in I Don't Know How She Does It, it is the performances by Christina Hendricks and former G4 hostess Olivia Munn. Hendricks plays Kate's best friend, Allison, a single mother who likely faces far more interesting struggles. Munn is Kate's assistant, Momo, who finds herself pregnant despite the fact that she hates children.
Oprah called the original novel, the "national anthem for working mothers." Something must have been lost in translation since the movie sets the women's movement back twenty years. I Don't Know How She Does It tries to answer a question nobody was asking. The real question is "Why would anyone care?" Not a whole lot of people since the film earned a measly worldwide box office of $30.5 million. Sarah Jessica Parker needs to find more challenging material than How She Does It, a humorless and out of touch comedy full of shrill characters.
Rating: * (*****)
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