I Don't Know How She Does It (PG-13) ★★½

Review Date: September 14th, 2011

Douglas McGrath's new movie, I Don't Know How She Does It, is based off of Allison Pearson's wildly successful novel of the same name that was on The New York Times' hardcover bestseller list for 23 weeks. Both mediums focus on the complicated life of Kate Reddy (played by an, I'll admit it, enjoyably perky Sarah Jessica Parker in the movie), who is the woman all working mothers want to be: smart, determined, and fiercely passionate about doing everything she can to balance her family with her high profile job at an investment banking firm. She's the mom who's thoughtful enough to try and distort a store-bought cherry pie with a rolling pin so it looks more homemade for her daughter's bake sale, and the one who finds joy in searching for a clean blouse that doesn't have the marshmallows from her son's Rice Krispies Treats soaked into it. Of course, Kate dreads leaving her children each day, but she loves her job very much and allows herself to part ways with them by concentrating on the belief that one day, they'll understand how much she genuinely wanted to go to work. And while it's clear the movie's goal is to humorously depict the lives of women who work and have families, it shockingly shies away from ending the still-popular belief that women are best ''pregnant, barefoot, and in the kitchen.''

Within the first minute of the movie, the fourth wall is broken -- and continues to break throughout the movie -- and several of Kate's colleagues and friends verify that Kate is an outstanding mother and a supremely productive member of the work force (which was pretty unnecessary, considering how we were just going to see all of Kate's talents anyway). Her friend Allison (played by Christina Hendricks) opens up a bit more than the others and unveils that even though Kate's totally great, she really wasn't doing very well with her responsibilities last winter. Then, we flash back three months, and watch as Kate goes from being an unnoticed employee at her Boston firm to writing a proposal and catching the interest of Jack Abelhammer (Pierce Brosnan) at the branch's New York office. Jack is enthusiastic about Kate's ideas and decides he wants to take the proposal and present it to a major client, which excites Kate because it would be great for her career. However, the problem is the proposal needs a lot of work before it can be shown to anybody, and Jack is careful to ask if Kate is comfortable traveling between Boston and New York and working day and night for two months until the whole thing is finished. In the back of her mind, she knows she should be spending heaps more time with her family instead of agreeing to take on more responsibilities at work, but she decides to do it anyway because, as the saying goes, "if it ain't hard, it ain't worth it."

So Kate and her assistant, Momo (played by a finally enjoyable Olivia Munn) begin working overtime. She spends three days a week in New York and the other four days glued to her computer in Boston. When she does make plans with her kids to do something like build a snowman, she ends up flaking out because something happens at the last minute regarding the proposal and she needs to drop everything to go work on it with Jack in New York. As angry as the kids are with their mom, Kate's husband Richard (Greg Kinnear) is even angrier because since his wife is away and working all the time, he becomes the caregiver by default.

Now, here's where things get a little dicey: Richard is an unemployed architect, and so I was surprised to watch him give his wife so much grief for working to keep their cute children fed. However, the audience is supposed to understand where he's coming from: we're supposed to applaud Richard's courage to make Kate feel guilty for being with Abelhammer instead of with her kids, and we're supposed to take his side as he repeatedly tries to convince her that she should be ashamed of putting her work ahead of her family. We're supposed to figure out that Richard feels bad for not working, and understand that when he's screaming at Kate for having a job, he's really just venting about how frustrated he is that he's unemployed. And here's where the movie has the opportunity to open up and blossom and be symbolic of how a woman should never have to apologize for having a career. Exactly here is where the movie should have stretched out its wings and showed Kate yelling from the top of her lungs about how unfair it is that women are frowned upon for having a job and a family, whereas it's completely fine for men to have both. But instead of defending herself like that, Kate responded to her husband's grievances by bowing her head down and acknowledging that she's wrong for working so hard, for being away from her children, for making bad choices and for making her husband's life harder. But the thing is that she hasn't made bad choices! She's made all the right ones because her husband doesn't work! The point is, McGrath had the opportunity to really emphasize how men with families and women with families are treated differently in the workplace -- but he ended up depicting how dangerous it is to be a woman with a job because it means that one day, her husband might resent her and make her apologize for it. And so instead of significantly expanding upon Pearson's efforts to level the ground for women with children in the workplace, McGrath (rather confusingly) stopped just short of following her lead.

Hollywood.com rated this film 2 1/2 stars.