Robbie Owen’s review published on Letterboxd:
OK. So what follows here is, more than likely, not going to be cohesive. It's probably not going to be well-written or well-argued. But it is going to be angry. Because when given the chance to make a film, some people make Citizen Kane, some people make The Godfather, and some people make I Don't Know How She Does It, and that made me very angry indeed.
"Who's going to prison?" asks a background character as Sarah Jessica Parker, a woman so equine if she tripped over in the street they'd bring out a screen and shoot her, fumbles about holding two phones, one of which apparently has a battery life so long we don't yet have the technology to carbon date it.
"THE DIRECTOR OF THIS FILM!" I scream. And when I say scream, I mean scream. The ceiling shook. I'd had a long day.
"Oh, who did they kill?" asks the husband.
"Narrative cinema." I cry.
I don't know why this conversation happens in the background. It's A). totally out of tone with the rest of the film B). Ignorant to the fact that there are kids of two and six (One of which is the horrible, unbelievable cliché imaginable until the final ten minutes where she starts shitting Hollywood loglines out of her mouth) at the table at which this is taking place and C). Is far more interesting than anything that happens on-screen at any stage. This isn't me assuming that grit and darkness automatically make for better films because I'm a manly man; this is a film where the closest we get to a serious dramatic spike is a scene in which Horselady McWibblechops receives a text message that says she may or may not have nits, and nobody can be sure as of yet but she should probably maybe think about finding out. That's the key plot point of the first half hour. Sarah Jessica Parker needs to scratch her hair.
Then there's a character called 'Momo', which would normally be irritating, but because Sarah Jessica Parker looks like a horse and when she says it she sounds like a cow it's actually kinda funny here.
Everyone's constantly telling Carrie Bradshaw that "They don't know how she does it". Our lady here, you see, is a juggler, as Greg Kinnear (Yes, Greg Kinnear -Star of some good films is in this) puts it at the film's merciful end, referencing an internal monologue from his wife he couldn't have possibly heard without having telepathic capabilities. If you'll give me a moment to rant further about the aforementioned internal, she uses the line "Someone told me the most important part of juggling is to throw... So I kept throwing!". That's the most garish, hideous line of dialogue I've heard in a long time. We then, about ten minutes later (Though it feels like three years), hear another reference to juggling as we enter yet another hilariously unhilarious comedy set-piece. Seriously, there's not one decent gag in this film. It's also inexplicably shot as if it were an episode of Parks and Recreation, complete with Jessica Zhelururuerr or however you spell her bloody stupid name trying really hard to do her best April Ludgate impression and falling with all the grace of Sarah Jessica Parker's film career. Anyway, the point in this paragraph was going to be that I point out she isn't even good at any of the things she does, never mind balancing them all, but I can't be bothered to go into that now. She's not there for her kids, messes about with her job, can't bake, doesn't talk to her husband, blah blah. You can make your own lengthy comic analogies, because I'm too angry to even attempt to write cohesively, one step on from my initial premonition.
I didn't even mention the crushing sexism, reducing the role and ability of women and their freedom, in some psuedo-feminist rampage that, through lines such as "There is no bigger waste of a woman than trying to act like a man", takes women's rights back so far that, given the correct projection of this movie's politics upon society, we would be just stages away from trading females for lumps of clay or copies of Top Gear Magazine.
I don't know why I did that to myself.