'I Don't Know How She Does It': Who Cares?

In the self-congratulatory comedy "I Don't Know How She Does It," Sarah Jessica Parker plays Kate Reddy, a working mother who might have earned our sympathy if she weren't so comfortably upper-income and so smug about her choices. The movie takes a magnifying glass to Kate's little indignities -- oh, the horrors of the kindergarten bake sale! -- while excluding and even demeaning any other female character living a different lifestyle.

Adapted from Allison Pearson's 2002 novel, "I Don't Know How She Does It" follows Kate's efforts to get ahead at a Boston financial firm (Kelsey Grammer is her demanding boss) while also tending to her architect husband, Richard (Greg Kinnear), and their two children (afterthoughts who rarely appear on screen). Kate is stretched even further when a new assignment requires frequent travel to New York for late-night meetings with handsome banker Jack Abelhammer (Pierce Brosnan).

Director Douglas McGrath and screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna can't pad this premise into a full-fledged story, so they frequently sit their characters down for "interviews," allowing them to deliver sub-Erma Bombeckian observations on gender and family. As for Kate and Jack, the film keeps rubbing them together, but they never produce a spark.

Any woman not like Kate is in for ill treatment here. Kate's single best friend (Christina Hendricks, "Mad Men") is barely acknowledged, and her ambitious assistant (Olivia Munn, rather good) is a misguided fool who doesn't want children.

The movie saves its most rancorous hatred for a stay-at-home mother, Wendy Best (Busy Philipps), portrayed as a rich, spoiled bimbo and a lousy parent to boot. Is it not possible that a woman like Wendy made the difficult decision to put family ahead of career? "I Don't Know How She Does It" really doesn't know how anyone else does it.

PLOT One woman's attempt to juggle family and career. RATING PG-13 (mild language, sexual themes)

CAST Sarah Jessica Parker, Greg Kinnear, Pierce Brosnan

LENGTH 1:31

PLAYING AT Area theaters

BOTTOM LINE For working mothers only; stay-at-home moms and single women are merely bad jokes in this self-congratulatory comedy.