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75In describing the conflict of a woman who has it all without enjoying it all, Pearson's book had teeth. McKenna's screenplay has only a smile. But is it ever good to laugh.
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63The unfortunate ending, which wallows in artifice, is superficial and saccharine, and unworthy of the material that precedes it.
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63The humor tends to be broad, but the spritely pace doesn't allow for too much lingering on the jokes that don't land (really, we've seen enough morning sickness bits to make us gag).
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60From the wry narration to the girlish mannerisms, Parker really does turn this film into "Sex and the Kiddies."
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60Director Douglas McGrath's empathy rescues it from the brink of disaster porn - it's so good-hearted and optimistic that a swath of stressed out moms will feel the flick speaks directly to them, which it does.
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60Amusing, but formulaic, romantic comedy.
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60Yes, I cringed at the casting, too, especially when, watching the trailer, I heard Parker deliver the narration in the same voice she used for Carrie in "Sex and the City." But Kate is funnier - less arch - than Carrie, and Parker reminds you what a dizzy, all-in, high-risk comic actress she can be when she's not too busy showing off the couture.
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Sep 16, 201150Like its main character, I Don't Know How She Does It tries to do everything, but it doesn't quite succeed.
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50It's not that I Don't Know How She Does It tells actual lies about working motherhood - many of its observations and jokes are on point - it's just that it omits the edge, the desperation of a woman on the verge.
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50Has nothing remotely new or comical in its arsenal. In fact, this vacuous farce has nothing original to say about marriage, working parenthood, child-rearing or corporate America.
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50Doesn't know how to do what I think it's trying to do.
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Sep 15, 201150It's smart, swanky, and good-looking, but strangely, it's not all that funny.
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50For the first 30 minutes I couldn't shake the feeling that I was watching a really promising pilot for network TV.
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50In theory, the film is another hoary exploration of the pressures of modern womanhood, but in practice, it offers the exact same thing as those NYC ingénue books: cookie-cutter wish-fulfillment and lifestyle porn for easily pleased, lonely romantics.
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50She (Parker) looks exhausted, first scene to last, and that fatigue spills off the screen onto us.
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50Sarah Jessica Parker's myriad fans will doubtless appreciate her frazzled warmth in a part she energetically inhabits, but the picture at times feels out of step with contemporary reality and humorless in its adaptation of a comic bestseller.
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40I Don't Know How She Does It feels like a relic from the "Sex and the City" boom times. If there were even a passing nod to economic reality - for example, an acknowledgement that not all stay-at-home mothers are pampered trophy wives who live at the gym - this self-satisfied domestic comedy might not leave behind such a tinny taste.
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40The major drawback of I Don't Know How She Does It, however, is Parker herself. She seems pathologically drawn to characters who don't possess believable flaws or complications -- just annoying tics.
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40If Kate's hyperkinetic cheer and shrill self-absorption are Carrie trademarks, 13 years after "Sex and the City" first appeared on television, their appeal has all but evaporated. I Don't Know How She Does It seems stuck in the past.
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Sep 15, 201140After a while, you stop hoping she'll tell her family to suck it up and watch some TV and then drink a bottle of rosé all by herself, and instead settle for wishing she'd develop a smidgen of self worth.
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Sep 15, 201138Occasionally veers so far into absurdity that it manages to make its central character - capable, smart, working mom Kate Reddy - look like a nitwit.
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33The second insurmountable problem is the difference between Parker's performance as a fortysomething banker, wife, and mother musing (in voice-over) at her computer and her previous performance as a single, thirtysomething girl-about-town in "Sex and the City": There is none. I don't know why she does it.
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30Long after lice from her children's school infested Kate's scalp, I was scratching my head about why a 91-minute movie seemed so long. The answer came from reframing the question. Why was a string of sitcom problems stretched to 91 minutes?
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30She is also played by Sarah Jessica Parker, a performer so aggressively determined to make us like her that no work-life conflicts in the film ever gain any traction; we're too distracted by the actress's manic tics (the head tilts, the popping of the wounded-deer eyes) to notice any real adversity.
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25The good news about I Don't Know How She Does It is that it's so bad that it's another ovary-punch to the formula chick flick. Bring on more films like "Bridesmaids."
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25It's a going-through-the-motions domestic comedy that makes, say, "Cheaper By The Dozen" look like a heart-warming, cutting-edge laugh riot.
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25Spiffy-looking, well-intentioned but ultimately witless film.
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Sep 14, 201125The witticisms are delivered via a suffocating glut of audience hand-holding, which includes constant doc-style confessionals, whimsical on-screen text, studio-audience sound effects, voices in Kate's head, and voiceover narration.
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Sep 14, 201120It's definitely not taking advantage of a talented supporting cast, as Greg Kinnear, Kelsey Grammer, Seth Meyers and Christina Hendricks are among those wasted.
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20Only Kinnear manages to give his role some shades beyond the broadly farcical, though even he ultimately succumbs to his leading lady's toothy grin and Oprah-sanctioned bromides.
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12Insipid, unfunny and cliche-ridden.