Hollywood is so obsessed with disaster films that cliché-driven filmmakers seem to have forgotten about one of the most reliable stand-by set-ups: the working-mother movie. Actually, in many ways, 24-Hour Woman is a disaster film, but instead of sinking ships and hurtling asteroids, the disaster on display is motherhood. Rosie Perez plays an ambitious New York morning-show producer who, after boosting the ratings of her show The 24-Hour Woman by documenting her pregnancy on air, must somehow juggle her job and her motherly duties while her actor husband (Diego Serrano) is off shooting a movie. Meanwhile, Marianne Jean-Baptiste leaves her three kids with her house-husband and helps out. Writer-director Nancy Savoca (Household Saints, Dogfight) portrays the challenge of balancing a career and child-rearing to be all but impossible, as Perez's life is cast into a 24-hour hell of screaming, nursing, and working-mom guilt. Perez and Jean-Baptiste, for what it's worth, are fine, but the supporting cast is second-rate. As 24-Hour Woman progresses, things get more and more hysterical, eventually leading to a highly improbable on-air hostage-crisis conclusion. If Savoca is exaggerating for effect, it's easy to wonder what effect she's striving for: A warning to all would-be working moms? An admonishment to avoid having kids entirely? Did we shave our legs for this?
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