I Don't Know How She Does It

Douglas McGrath

The story: Kate (Sarah Jessica Parker) juggles marriage to architect Richard (Greg Kinnear), their two young children and a demanding job as an investment banker. When her pitch for a new product is picked up by higher-up Jack (Pierce Brosnan), the tricky act becomes even more frenetic. Based on the 2002 best-selling novel of the same name by Allison Pearson.

Ignoring the ghastly movies, this could be the alternate-universe sequel to the hit TV series Sex And The City (1998 to 2004).

In the HBO series, Sarah Jessica Parker plays Carrie, a single woman in her 30s living and loving in New York and writing about her experiences for a newspaper.

It is a role that she is immediately associated with, to the point where it can become difficult to separate the actress from the character.

And deliberate or not, some of the mannerisms Parker imbued Carrie with are present in Kate in this movie, most notably a tendency to be klutzy when she is nervous.

As a single in New York, Carrie remarks that one is always looking for a job, a boyfriend or an apartment.

Well, Kate is married to a nice-guy architect (Kinnear), has a job that she loves and is presumably not looking for a new house. Instead, her challenge is to keep it all together.

The idea of women taking on multiple roles has been around for a while. Author Shirley Conran promised to tell women how to be a working wife and mother in Superwoman (1975), while feminist Betty Friedan addressed the multiple demands placed on women in The Second Stage (1981).

I Don’t Know How She Does It does not really add anything meaningful to the conversation.

Basically, Kate gets lots of breaks. She has a mostly supportive husband, a charming work partner (Brosnan) and a not-very-scary boss – after all, he is played by Kelsey Grammer from TV’s Frasier (1993 to 2004). All this makes her work-home balance problem seem like not much of a dilemma when it gets resolved.

Neither does the film rate highly as a light-hearted comedy and only Olivia Munn as Kate’s robotic assistant with a heart of gold grows on you.

Douglas McGrath’s direction is mostly workman-like and the flourishes, such as the documentary-style interviews with the characters, feel gimmicky as they are not particularly interesting.

What is curious about the movie is how it obviously seeks to rehabilitate the rock-bottom reputations of bankers in the wake of the financial tsunami.

Kate’s proposed product is all about helping people to retire because, hey, that is what really matters to investment firms rather than the bottom line.

And at a friendly bowling game, Jack is told that he would be forgiven for being a banker if he wins the competition for the group. No prizes for guessing whether he does.

It does make you wonder whether Wall Street fat cats bankrolled the film.

(ST)