I Don't Know How She Does It (12A)

Comedy (2011)
89mins US

Starring: Seth Meyers, Greg Kinnear, Olivia Munn, Christina Hendricks, Kelsey Grammer, Pierce Brosnan, Sarah Jessica Parker
Director: Douglas McGrath
Writer(s): Aline Brosh McKenna
Listings: London | Rest of UK and Ireland

Kate Reddy is an executive at a Boston-based financial management firm who has successfully clambered up the corporate ladder. She is the main breadwinner for her family: her architect husband Richard is looking for a solo project to help provide for their young children. Richard wins the job he has been pitching for on the very same day that Kate learns she has won a major new account that will necessitate frequent trips to New York to work alongside charming head honcho Jack Abelhammer.

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LondonNet Film Review
I Don't Know How She Does It

Thanks to Sex And The City, we're accustomed to seeing Sarah Jessica Parker sashaying through the bustling streets of Manhattan, designer bag in one hand, mobile 'phone clasped to an ear in the other...

She returns to her beloved New York for Douglas McGrath's well-heeled comedy-drama about a high-flying career woman juggling responsibilities to her boss and her family. Based on the book by Welsh newspaper columnist and author Allison Pearson, I Don't Know How She Does It is everything you expect: marital strife, winsome kids, zinging one-liners and cloying sentiment. Naturally, Parker is impeccably tailored and coiffed as her character deals with each familial crisis. She even courts the attention of a wealthy, older gentleman a la Mr Big, who clearly appreciates an intelligent woman capable of talking investment strategies in the midst of a head lice outbreak. Essentially, McGrath's light-hearted confection is Sex, If I'm Not Too Tired After My Business Trip, In The City.

Kate Reddy (Parker) is an investment banker at a Boston-based financial management firm, who has successfully clambered up the corporate ladder, impressing her boss (Kelsey Grammer) and her junior assistant (Olivia Munn). Kate's architect husband, Richard (Greg Kinnear), is looking for his first solo project, so he can also provide for their six-year-old daughter Emily (Emma Rayne Lyle) and two-year-old son Ben (Theodore and Julius Goldberg). Meanwhile, Kate and best friend Allison (Christina Hendricks) contend with disapproving stares from the stay-at-home moms led by Wendy Best (Busy Phillips) and Janine LoPietro (Sarah Shahi). Disaster looms when Richard wins a lucrative pitch on the same day that Kate learns her proposal for a new investment fund has impressed head honcho Jack Abelhammer (Pierce Brosnan) in the New York office. Suddenly, Kate's schedule of PowerPoint presentations and afterschool activities became far more hectic.

I Don't Know How She Does It is as light and airy as cappuccino froth, lingering pleasantly in the untaxed mind. Parker makes all of the predictable comic moves (discovering her child's breakfast cereal on a suit lapel before an important meeting, adjusting undergarments in front of a video conference camera) and Aline Brosh McKenna's screenplay provides her with some smart quips ("Trying to be a man is a waste of a woman"). She gels well with Kinnear, whose character is undernourished to give Brosnan's dashing business associate a fighting chance of disrupting the Reddy marriage. Munn scene-steals as the child-phobic underling, who recalls, "I had a fish once but he kept looking at me with these eyes, saying 'Feed me'. So I flushed him." The linear plot glides effortlessly from conflict to resolution, convincing us that you can have your flourless, organic cake and eat it. Just be prepared to hire a personal trainer afterwards to burn it off.

- Sam Cannon