In “I Don’t Know How She Does It,” a working mom comedy based on a popular book of the same name, Sarah Jessica Parker plays Carrie Bradshaw in a different time and dimension. This time out she’s traded New York for Boston, her Manolo Blahniks for children, Mr. Big for Mr. Joe Average and all that sex in the city she used to have for bake sales and kid’s birthday parties.
Fans of “Sex and the City” will recognize some of the style of “I Don’t Know How She Does It.” if you’ve missed SJP typing on her laptop or doing ocassionally witty voice over, then you may find something here to like. Otherwise it’s a tedious fourth-wall breaking exercise in female empowerment.
Where “Sex and the City” broke ground in its portrayal of female relationships, “I Don’t Know How She Does It” settles for rehashing truisms we’ve heard ad nauseum. “Trying to be a man is a waste of a woman,” may sound like a Carie Bradshaw line, but its minus the freshness that made Carrie’s quips so memorable.
What it lacks in substance it tries to make up for style. Graphics adorn the screen and characters address the audience. So is it a documentary? Nope, it’s an underwritten comedy where the acors break the fourth wall to make up for the story’s shortcomings.
“I Don’t Know How She Does It” tries to play off SJP’s previous successes, but only manges to be even more forgettable than “Sex and the City 2.”
Sarah Jessica Parker is best known as Carrie Bradshaw, the sharp-tongued figurehead of Sex and the City, the long-running ode to post feminism and stylish clothes. But before Mr. Big and the Louboutins she was a movie star with some classics– like Footloose–and some stinkers–like Dudley Do-Right –to her credit.
This weekend she’s back on the big screen for the first time in a non-Sex and the City movie since the 2009 flop Did You Hear about the Morgans? In I Don’t Know How She Does It she plays a version of Carrie all grown up with kids and a job in the financial sector. It’s a far cry from her first big movie, Footloose.
She played Rusty, a role Parker called the “best friend of the pretty girl.” The movie and its fancy footwork earned her a Best Young Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture Musical, Comedy, Adventure or Drama nomination at the Sixth Annual Youth in Film Awards.
A few forgettable films followed like Firstborn—described as a “heavy-handed suburban sitcom”—Girls Just Want to Have Fun—called “a total wannabe in the realm of 80s teen flicks”—and Flight of the Navigator, which features the voice of Pee Wee Herman as a robot.
It wasn’t until she teamed with Steve Martin in L.A. Story that things started looking up. In this surreal look at life and love in Los Angeles Parker plays SanDeE*, a ditzy blonde who aspires to be a spokesmodel. “Um, it’s just a model who speaks,” she explains. “You know, and she points at things like merchandise, you know, like a car or washer and dryer. Sometimes it’s something really small, you know, like, like a book or fine art print.”
The movie broke her out of the teen movie mode and displayed her deft comic timing which was put to great use in Honeymoon in Vegas opposite Nic Cage. A few flops later she appeared in the critically acclaimed Ed Wood with Johnny Depp. Playing the much put-upon girlfriend of the world’s worst director, she calls the actors and crew of his film Bride of the Monster “the usual cast of misfits and dope addicts.”
Her most spectacular pre-Sex and the City role, however, is in Mars Attacks. In it she plays a flighty talk show host, who literally becomes a talking head when she is beheaded by aliens.
In “I Don’t Know How She Does It,” a working mom comedy based on a popular book of the same name, Sarah Jessica Parker plays Carrie Bradshaw in a different time and dimension. This time out she’s traded New York for Boston, her Manolo Blahniks for children, Mr. Big for Mr. Joe Average and all that sex in the city she used to have for bake sales and kid’s birthday parties.
