Back in the 1980's it was hard to be a working mother and the good folks who made 9 to 5 showed us how to do it-with weed, humour and rat poison. 30 years later , guess what, it is still hard to be a working mother yet it is seemingly impossible to make a decent movie about it. I Don't Know How She Does it, the movie with the worst title ever, attempts to talk about the issues women face in the work place but is so conservative that I don't know exactly which women could possibly relate to this. Sarah Jessica Parker is Kate, a high powered executive with two children and a husband (Greg Kinnear). Kate tries to juggle all of this by being perpetually cheerful, buying pies from the market and then pretending she made them herself and bitching to her best friend (Christina Hendricks). Meanwhile,mean mom, Wendy (Busy Philipps) goes to the gym all day and brags about what a great mother she is. All the female characters get to share their innermost thoughts via monologues. Sadly these monologues are tired and rehashed. Things change when Kate gets promoted and she must spend more time in New York with the ever so handsome and charming Jack (Pierce Brosnan) (damn, he really is handsome though). Naturally there are feelings and temptations but nothing happens nor even comes close to happening unless you consider lengthy discussions about what signing your messages with 'xo' means 'something'. Meanwhile, Kate's coworker, Momo (a show stealing Olivia Munn) who is a workaholic with no desire for children, accidentally gets pregnant. She intends to get an abortion (of course this is a Hollywood movie so there is no a-word mentioned) but a 'heartwarming' speech from Kate changes her mind and when she finally has the child she is overwhelmed with emotion, naturally and by the end of the film everyone has agreed that motherhood is the most important thing any woman can do. The problem I have with a film like this is that it pretends it's about the struggles women face, except that the women don't really struggle. Kate doesn't ever feel torn between her husband and Jack and has no problem deciding not to have an affair, glibly telling a heartbroken Jack that she is going to stay with her husband and that he'll find someone great (the most patronising statement ever heard by single ears) and Momo doesn't struggle at all with her decision to have the baby. Furthermore the mean girl antics between the working moms and the stay at home moms is ridiculous. Yes, women are competitive but I think if there's something that Hollywood movies should be promoting it is the idea that women can make completely different life choices and still get along, not the idea that women never cheat or have abortions. Even if you stand squarely against abortion and those who have affairs, it must be recognised that those things happen, and pretending that they don't doesn't do any favours to feminism or quality film making. If you want to watch a film about women, I suggest any other film than this one (obviously excluding anything with Kate Hudson, especially that stinking turd "Something Borrowed", the only film I've watched this year that was worse than I Don't Know How She Does It).
Bottom Line: A 1950's advice book for women is more modern than this movie.
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