I DON'T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT (2011)

Genre: Comedy
Director: Douglas McGrath
Cast: Sarah Jessica Parker, Greg Kinnear, Pierce Brosnan, Olivia Munn, Seth Meyers, Kelsey Grammer, Christina Hendricks, Jane Curtin
RunTime: 1 hr 29 mins
Released By: GV
Rating: TBA
Official Website: howshedoesitmovie.com

Opening Day: 22 September 2011

Synopsis: Kate Reddy (Parker) devotes her days to her job with a Boston-based financial management firm. At night she goes home to her adoring, recently-downsized architect husband Richard (Kinnear) and their two young children. It's a non-stop balancing act, the same one that Kate's acerbic best friend and fellow working mother Allison (Christina Hendricks) performs on a daily basis, and that Kate's super-brainy, child-phobic young junior associate Momo (Olivia Munn) fully intends to avoid. When Kate gets handed a major new account that will require frequent trips to New York, Richard also wins the new job he's been hoping for—and both will be spreading themselves even thinner. Complicating matters is Kate's charming new business associate Jack Abelhammer (Brosnan), who begins to prove an unexpected source of temptation. Based on the critically acclaimed bestseller by Allison Pearson.

Movie Review:

Had Carrie Bradshaw decided to finally settle down and raise a family, the result could very well be exactly what Sarah Jessica Parker’s character in this film is going through. Channelling her inner Carrie-ness into the role of Kate Reddy, Parker balances the former’s capriciousness with sensibility and judiciousness to illuminate the struggles of working mothers out there in the world today. And thanks to her radiant, empathetic performance, ‘I Don’t Know How She Does It’ is more than a ‘Sex and the City’-wannabe, but an astute multi-faceted portrait that will leave you tickled and moved at the same time.

In adapting the bestselling 2002 novel by Allison Pearson for the big screen, screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna (The Devil Wears Prada, Morning Glory) transports the setting from London to Boston where Kate, the hotshot investment manager, lives with her often unemployed architect husband Richard (Greg Kinnear) and their two kids Marla (Jane Curtin) and Lew (Mark Blum). The opening minutes of the film reveal her balancing act between career and family, as well as the various supporting characters in her life that will take turns speaking to the camera throughout the film. 

McKenna centres the film around three months of Kate’s life where her work-life balance is thrown into disarray, as a career-defining new account with powerhouse fund manager Jack Abelhammer (a very suave Pierce Brosnan) means she has to work late nights and commute frequently between Boston and New York. To make matters worse, Kate and Jack’s successful professional partnership threatens to turn personal after a fun game of bowling, countless hours of communication, and Jack’s signing his emails to Kate with “xo”- though ultimately McKenna keeps the complication more restrained than in Pearson’s source novel. 

As if to emphasise Kate’s competence, most of the supporting characters are largely sidelined- no matter the anti-Kate stay-home mother nicknamed ‘The Momster’, or the envious back-stabbing male colleague Chris (Seth Meyers)- and relegated to propelling the film’s narrative momentum with their faux-documentary style interviews. The only other character besides Kate that gets some measure of development is her junior assistant Momo (a scene-stealing Olivia Munn), who admires Kate but steadfastly refuses to become her until the day she discovers that she is pregnant. 

Though having the characters address their audience directly reeks of TV sitcom, director Douglas McGrath (Infamous, Nicholas Nickleby) makes the most of the gimmick thanks to McKenna’s smartly scripted witticisms. Listening to ‘The Momster’s’ thinly veiled sarcastic barbs at Kate while working out on an elliptical trainer is never short of amusing, but the best bits belong to Momo’s mortification at her boss’ casual attitude to her physical appearance- especially when Kate finds out that she has gotten a case of the lice from her daughter Marla. Munn nails her role as Momo, conveying both awe and anxiety at Kate’s everyday circumstances perfectly.

The other supporting players make the best of their limited roles. Kinnear exudes sincerity and empathy both as Kate’s husband and as father to their children, but it is also a role that he can play easily. Ditto for Brosnan’s charming and debonair Abelhammer, who bears an uncanny resemblance to ‘Sex and the City’s’ Mr Big. But of course, the movie rests squarely on Parker’s shoulders, and the actress brings her trademark verve and a surprising amount of warmth and sensitivity to her character. Parker also proves to be just as adept as a physical comedian, a particularly hilarious sequence when a lice-infected Kate frantically scratches her head during a first high-powered meeting with Abelhammer.

Thanks to the excellent SJP, the film becomes much more than just a slick ‘Sex and the City’ spinoff, but also an ode to the working mothers out there who balance the demands of career and family day in and day out. You may argue if they need another reminder of the stresses and strains they go through daily, but at least from this guy’s perspective, there may be comfort to be found in solidarity- and it isn’t hard to relate to Kate with Parker’s effortless portrayal. With plenty of charm and wit, it’s not hard to figure out why this is a winning comedy that celebrates the modern-day woman.  

Movie Rating:

(It may seem like a SatC spinoff, but this celebration of the modern-day working women in our society is fresh and charming in its own right- complete with an utterly winsome performance by SJP)

Review by Gabriel Chong