Often, the appeal of a film lies less in itself and more in the viewer’s viewing circumstances. You could watch a well made movie – Jane Eyre (2011) comes to mind – and find it uninteresting because you were thinking of the next day’s work deliverables to send out while gingerly massaging that sore point on your spine that was throbbing a little too much after driving over dust paths and rocks to reach your remote factory site. May be that was just me.
Or you could watch ‘The House Bunny’ and LOVE it just because you had a wonderful day and it was a good way to end it with a bunch of laughs. Again this could is a specific personal circumstance.
Hence, I must be indulged when I say that IDKHSDI is a good example of the latter. Having not watched a movie for a long time (a week IS a long time for me), I popped this into the video player with trepidation. Reviews have been overwhelmingly negative, even for a chick flick.
The movie is based on a bestseller chick lit of the same name, hardly a seminal look at women’s travails at balancing family and career demands when published in 2002. With zero to negative expectations, I warmed to the plot and found myself suitably invested in Kate’s problems and her self-inflicted pressures to be everything to everyone.
The movie is based on a bestseller chick lit of the same name, hardly a seminal look at women’s travails at balancing family and career demands when published in 2002. With zero to negative expectations, I warmed to the plot and found myself suitably invested in Kate’s problems and her self-inflicted pressures to be everything to everyone.
Kate Reddy is pitching a major investment fund idea to her bosses and she must juggle her increased workload and ensuing travel with the demands of her husband and two little children. No surprises here, there are a couple of obstacles but all goes well and Kate ends up with a promotion AND more family time.
Sarah Jessica Parker is her usual anxious-to-please, likable self here. Forever stuck in Carrie Bradshaw mode, she really seems to have no other approach to playing her characters - which is not really a bad thing. She doesn’t usually feature in intellectually stimulating fare anyway, so when you watch anything that she features in, you know what you are getting yourself into. Here she licks batter off her cardigan, frantically scratches her lice-infested scalp (very realistically I may add), goes bowling in a frock and generally saves the day. The aging process isn’t being kind to her though and she looks a little too haggard here.
Christina Hendricks is the obligatory best friend and Olivia Munn is the stereotypical, driven career-woman. Both are cardboard cutout characters, but the roles clearly are good breaks from their television day jobs for both actresses.
Greg Kinnear and Pierce Brosnan are oh-so-good eye candy. They just seem a little too much for the roles. In a chick flick and SJP vehicle, the men don’t really matter as long as they are hunky and appear suitably impressed and charmed by the female lead’s – often ditzy – antics.
It’s meant to be a comedy but is not very funny. I did smile a bit – more at the moviemakers’ attempts to accurately portray a corporate, investment banker feel by randomly dropping jargon all over the place. Having the actors constantly break the fourth wall was something I didn’t really like as well. I associate that tactic more with television and combining that with SJP, made the movie seem like back-to-back episodes of some a generic TV Show.
In all, it is rather mind numbing and cliché ridden, but it is 90 minutes of watching SJP prance around doing her thing. There are worse ways to spend your time.
