BEFORE: Greg Kinnear carries over from "The Last Song" and should this one count as a romance film or as a Mother's Day film? I've been on the fence about this one, but I guess since I need it here to help link my February chain together, I'm treating it as a film about a marriage, not about how hard it is to be a mother. Maybe it's both things, that's OK, but I need it here as a film about a marriage where there are kids, and OK, what effect parenting has on the relationship.
Here's todays' line-up for TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", Day 18:
Best Special Effects Nominees:
6:30 am "Green Dolphin Street" (1947)
9:00 am "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" (1944)
11:30 am "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1962)
2:45 pm "Forbidden Planet" (1956)
4:30 pm "Topper Returns" (1941)
6:15 pm "Them!" (1954)
Best Special Effects Winners:
8:00 pm "Fantastic Voyage" (1966)
10:00 pm "Blithe Spirit" (1945)
11:45 pm "2001" (1968)
2:30 am "Destination Moon" (1950)
4:15 am "Tom Thumb" (1958)
Another 6 seen out of these 11 ("Mutiny on the Bounty", "Forbidden Planet", "Topper Returns", "Them!", "Fantastic Voyage" and "2001") brings me to 78 seen out of 205, or 38%. It's a little weird that a classic movie channel is celebrating special effects from the 1940's and 50's, because they were all terrible by todays' standards. The technology of special effects, by its very nature, got better as time went on.
THE PLOT: A comedy centered on the life of Kate Reddy, a finance executive who is the breadwinner for her husband and two kids.
AFTER: I think this could have worked as EITHER a romance film or as a Mother's Day film, but I just needed it here to make the chain that I wanted, this film ended up serving as a connector between the Miley Cyrus films and the Jennifer Lopez films, but that's OK, that's still a vital purpose. There's the standard love triangle here as Kate Reddy's new business partner has some type of romantic feelings for her, and this grows the more time they spend together, but really, that's a red herring here, she was never going to leave her husband for this guy. However, her spending more time with the rich business partner and less time with her husband and two kids is a source of some concern, and sure, there's a strain on her marriage, but this was maybe going to happen no matter what.
As the movie so enjoys pointing out, there's still a terrible double standard, as women are expected to somehow juggle a career, a marriage, and child care, while also maintaining her sanity, and stereotypically men aren't expected to do this, not as often anyway, and still not as a matter of course. I think things have changed over the last 20-30 years, and caregiving fathers are more commonplace now, women who earn more than their spouses are also more common now. It's just this traditional "male as breadwinner" thing is partially being phased out, and I"m fine with that. Who wants to work hard at a soul-crushing career for a pile of money, anyway. JK, I would if I could but I haven't really had the same opportunities, nobody's hiring white males now because all the HR departments are trying to make their companies "more diverse" so hiring another white guy is counter-productive. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
People keep constantly saying the movie's tagline when referring to Kate, they simply don't know how she "does it." The problem here is that she DOESN'T do it, not successfully, anyway - the movie keeps reminding us that she's breaking one promise after another to her husband and kids. Plus the family uses a nanny, and so that's cheating, right? The nanny is a surfer (in BOSTON?) so she's constantly late, but I guess she's helpful in the long run. Maybe there are some beach areas in Massachusetts where people do surf, but come on, isn't it too cold for that like six months out of the year? Kate also resorts to cheats like buying a store-made pie for the school bake sale, then smushing it up a little so it looks homemade. Again, that's cheating!
Her best friend, Allison, is another working mother, only a single one. Their nemeses are the "Momsters", these are the mothers of other kids at the same school who do NOT have jobs, they take care of their children full-time (or at least pretend to, they seem to have nannies too) and then act all opinionated and look down on the mothers who are trying to have careers, too. Hey it's fine if your husband is a well-paid lawyer or something, but if he's just a carpenter or remodeler or something, who can blame Kate for traveling for her higher-paying job in the financial industry? Should one type of mom REALLY be looking down on the other type of mom just because they're not full-time moms? Why not a little solidarity, why can't these women band together and collectively demand a little more parenting be done by men?
For example, we see Kate and her husband Richard working hard to control the wild birthday party for their son, and then they have to do all the clean-up after, too. Meanwhile, Wendy, one of the momsters tells the camera that she knows how to throw a perfect birthday party, too, she just calls up Ernesto at Party Services and they handle the whole thing. Man, this movie really want us to hate rich moms, they keep making them look all judgmental and spoiled. Why do this if it's going to alienate even a portion of the moms in the audience?
Kate is stretched thin, between the proposal for a new type of retirement accounts, flying to Cleveland to meet with the investors, bouncing back and forth between Boston and New York, while still trying to be a parent and also have a loving relationship with her husband, even though she's been traveling off and on for two months. And this is just the proposal for the new accounts, once she gets the job there will be more work in setting the whole thing up and maintaining the new accounts, so I'll guess she'll see her kids over the holidays, at least. NO, but wait, she's got an emergency meeting on Thanksgiving weekend, it's the only time that the CEO can meet with them! (NITPICK POINT: Nobody, simply nobody works on Thanksgiving weekend, not even the top top most successful executives. This is why Manhattan always looks like a ghost town during the Macy's parade, all the real New Yorkers have flown off or driven off to somewhere else.)
Ironically, the movie also tries to do too much - it can't fix love triangles, give parental advice, and show women how to juggle their careers and family, keep their bosses from falling in love with them and not make their husbands feel "less than" if their jobs don't bring in as much of a salary. Then there's the business of also trying to convince single pregnant women to carry their babies to term (because even if they say they "don't want kids", they're really just misunderstanding what a wonderful process it all is. Give me a freakin' break, if somebody says they don't want to be a parent, just let them not be a parent!). Really overstepping here, if Kate's assistant wanted to get an abortion, she really should have stayed out of it and let her make her own decision.
Of course, the plotlines go a bit to the extreme, like when the entire class gets lice, and Kate is affected too. But another NITPICK POINT, I don't think there are businesses that exist JUST to help people rid themselves of head lice. This is not a thing in Massachusetts, not anywhere - have you ever seen a "Lice Enders" shop? What a terrible business model, just sitting around the converted hair salon, just waiting for the kids in your town to get infected with head lice. How does that place even stay in business? That would be like opening a clothing store and only selling shirts that have one arm, or pants that are missing a leg, and just waiting for people who are amputees to move to your town and discover your very speclalized shop.
And the big revelation at the end? Kate realizes that her husband and kids are feeling neglected, so she vows to cut back on her business trips and spend more time with them. Oops, sorry, should have said SPOILER ALERT, but that's the big banner headline? Couldn't she have just figured that out from the start and done more telecommuting? Worked from home on her computer? I guess maybe that just wasn't done as commonly in 2011 as it is now, and we have the pandemic to thank for it. More parents these days are finding ways to work from home so they CAN have it all, they can have a hand in raising their kids AND also get their work done - I mean, sure, thank God for computers and all that, but I wonder just how many people working at home now are working as hard as they would have if they were still commuting to an office. At least when you're in an office you're not likely to be distracted by your TV, your music and yes, your kids. Just saying.
Also starring Sarah Jessica Parker (last seen in "Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me"), Pierce Brosnan (last seen in "Black Adam"), Christina Hendricks (last heard in "Scoob!"), Kelsey Grammer (last seen in "Think Like a Man Too"), Seth Meyers (last seen in "The Last Blockbuster"), Olivia Munn (last seen in "Love Wedding Repeat"), Jane Curtin (last seen in "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time"), Mark Blum (last seen in "Human Capital"), Busy Philipps (last heard in "DC League of Super-Pets"), Sarah Shahi (also last seen in "Black Adam"), Jessica Szohr (last seen in "Ted 2"), Emma Rayne Lyle, Julius Goldberg, Theodore Goldberg, James Murtaugh (last seen in "Night Falls on Manhattan"), Eugenia Yuan (last seen in "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny"), Beth Fowler, Michael Hogan (last seen in "Coffee and Cigarettes"), Marceline Hugot (last seen in "She Said"), Steve Routman (last seen in "The Trial of the Chicago 7"), Raymond McAnally, Timothy Finch (last seen in "The Wedding Ringer")
with a cameo from Mika Brzezinski (last seen in "Running with Beto") and archive footage of Cary Grant (last seen in "De Palma"), Rosalind Russell (last seen in "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind").
RATING: 4 out of 10 PowerPoint slides
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