I Don't Know How She Does It

I think I had the same reaction when I realized Sarah Jessica Parker scored the starring role in this movie.

Parker stars as Kate Reddy - a hardworking investment fund manager and mother of two who always burns the candle at both ends. Between constant business travel, bake sales, doctor appointments and more, Kate is at her wits' end. Of course, it is about to get worse.

Kate's latest proposal has caught the attention of the company's bigwig, Jack Abelhammer (Pierce Brosnan), and this could be the biggest break of her career. With all of the extra work, her hubby's (Greg Kinnear) new project demanding more of his time at work and a daughter (Emma Rayne Lyle) who wants to spend more time with Mommy, Kate might have met her match.

Can Kate continue to be SuperWoman?

I Don't Know How She Does It feels like a movie that should have been made 20 years ago. They treat working women with families like some sort of newly discovered species, when they have become the norm. Writer Aline Brosh McKenna (based on the novel by Allison Pearson) and director Douglas McGrath constantly have the other characters speaking documentary-style to the audience as if they are beings straight out of an Ozzie and Harriet world where people don't have to struggle with these commitments, pressures and juggling of work and home. Plus, let's start asking how she does it when she is a single mom with three kids, 10% of the income and no full time nanny. This is where the movie loses us.

Sure, the audience is going to feel some sympathy for Kate and see some similarities between their lives and hers when it comes to the hard decisions that need to be made, and the way she is torn between family and work, but I Don't Know How She Does It is a bland movie without any emotional punch or comedy zip. McGrath and McKenna are going through the predictable motions without adding any depth. The fights between Kate and the husband are contrived. The inevitable big sappy speech where Kate declares what is truly important says nothing new.

Kinnear, Parker, Brosnan, and the rest of the cast admirably give it the old college try, but Katherine Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart, Meryl Streep, Al Pacino, Orson Welles and Lawrence Olivier couldn't elevate this material beyond passable levels.

I Don't Know How She Does It is rated PG-13 for sexual references throughout