I Don’t Know How She Does It (2011) The Weinstein Company/Comedy-Drama RT: 89 minutes Rated PG-13 (sexual references, some language) Director: Douglas McGrath Screenplay: Aline Brosh McKenna Music: Aaron Zigman Cinematography: Stuart Dryburgh Release date: September 16, 2011 (US) Cast: Sarah Jessica Parker, Pierce Brosnan, Greg Kinnear, Christina Hendricks, Kelsey Grammer, Seth Meyers, Olivia Munn, Jane Curtin, Mark Blum, Busy Philipps, Sarah Shahi, Jessica Szohr, Emma Rayne Lyle, Julius and Theodore Goldberg, James Murtaugh. Box Office: $9.6M (US)/$31.4M (World)
Rating: **
If I didn’t see I Don’t Know How She Does It at the cinema, I’d swear it’s one of the countless working mother comedies made for Lifetime. It’s that uninspired and unoriginal. I wouldn’t have even bothered rewatching it if not for the worldwide pandemic that’s been keeping me home this past year.
I came across my original review of I Don’t Know How She Does It while combing through the Movie Guy 24/7 archives. I didn’t remember a thing about it. It left that much of an impression. It was a very negative review. I called it “unfunny” and “insincere”. Since I couldn’t find a single trace of it in my memory, I made the supreme sacrifice of watching it again for the first time. I didn’t hate it this time. I didn’t like it either. In fact, I have no strong feelings about it at all. It is the very definition of mediocre. As such, the following is a complete rewrite as opposed to a mere reediting.
Adapted from Allison Pearson’s best seller, I Don’t Know How She Does It stars Sarah Jessica Parker (Sex and the City) as Kate Reddy, a frazzled forty-ish woman trying to juggle a family and a career. To describe her life as hectic would be a gross understatement. Her demanding job with a Boston financial firm leaves her precious little time with her husband Richard (Kinnear, As Good as It Gets) and two young children. She’s always on the go rushing to catch a plane or get to a meeting on time. At home, she’s too exhausted to have sex with her husband. She lays awake at night making a mental list of all the things she needs to do the next day. It’s about to get a lot more complicated.
Kate gets assigned an important client the same day her architect husband gets a new job. It’ll be difficult, but she assures him they can make it work. Yeah, right. Her new client Jack Abelhammer (Brosnan, GoldenEye) is important enough that she has to fly to New York on a frequent basis to meet with him in his office. It puts a real strain on her relationship with her family as she too often neglects their needs in favor of her career. It certainly doesn’t help that widowed Jack starts to develop feelings for Kate.
If I Don’t Know How She Does It sounds like a lame sitcom to you, you’re not alone. It relies heavily on voiceover from Kate (a la Carrie Bradshaw from SATC) who also frequently breaks the fourth wall to address the audience directly. It contains generic characters who may as well be identified by labels instead of names. We get the Supportive Best Friend (Hendricks, Mad Men), Frenemy Stay-at-Home Mom (Philipps, White Chicks), Emotionless Career-Focused Assistant (Munn, Magic Mike), Meddling Mother-in-Law (Curtin, SNL) and Designated Office A-hole (Meyers, SNL). They’re not developed too far beyond their respective labels, yet we still get to hear their thoughts on whatever when they too address the audience. My question is why should we care what they have to say? None of them are especially likable.
I Don’t Know How She Does It is a comedy in the academic sense only. It’s supposed to be funny, but it isn’t. It isn’t even particularly amusing although I did chortle a little at an early scene of Kate trying to disguise a store-bought cherry pie as a homemade treat for her daughter’s school bake sale. Most of the time, I sat in stony silence as the stressed protagonist hustles her butt from one situation to the next. Everything that happens is completely predictable. Take the personal assistant, a through-and-through professional who insists she’ll never have children because they’ll cause her to lose focus on her career. Guess who gets pregnant by the midway point? If you named anybody other then the PA, you haven’t seen nearly enough movies.
Ten years ago, I said that my hatred for I Don’t Know How She Does It was mainly founded on my resentment of the main character for choosing work over family. I now realize that it’s not as much resentment as it is being unable to relate to the situation. My brother and I had a traditional stay-at-home mom. We never came home to an empty house nor were we ever looked after by a stranger. Of course, that was a different time. Gender roles have changed dramatically. So has the cost of living. It now takes at least two incomes to run a household. It’s been this way for a while which calls into question the movie’s timeliness. Wouldn’t it have been more relevant in the 90s? It’s not exactly the Nine to Five of the 2010s.
The performances in I Don’t Know How She Does It are fairly perfunctory. There’s no real depth to any of the characters. The stay-at-home mothers, referred to by Kate as “The Momsters”, come off as overgrown mean girls who disapprove of working moms. SJP is okay as Kate even if the character is a variation on Carrie Bradshaw. I never felt any chemistry between her and Kinnear. He’s rather bland as the nice guy husband whose patience is running out. Brosnan not only turns on the charm as Jack, he also taps into his real-life experience with losing a wife to cancer. He’s actually the best thing about the movie.
I know it’s petty, but there’s one part of I Don’t Know How She Does It that I absolutely do not believe. Kate has to cut Thanksgiving with her family short after she gets called to a last-minute emergency meeting with a prospective investor. She has to be in New York the very next day. How in the hell does she manage to book a flight at the last minute during one of the busiest travel times of the year? We’re talking about a time of year when a panicked mother can’t get to her young son who’s been left home alone on at least two separate occasions. One would think all flights are booked, but I guess they aren’t in Kate’s universe.
I just realized it’s unfair to call all of the characters in I Don’t Know How She Does It unlikable. The kids are okay meaning they’re not brats. Not really. I actually felt sorry for them as they watch their mom leave for one quick business trip after another leaving behind a trail of broken promises and broken hearts. It’s okay though. Since I Don’t Know How She Does It is intended as light entertainment for a girls night out, we get a happy ending where everything is resolved neatly and everybody lives happily ever after. This is NOT a spoiler. We know this will be the outcome. It always is. It might not turn out this way in real life, but who goes to the movies to see real life?
In any event, I predict I Don’t Know How She Does It will leave no lasting impression. Directed by Doug McGrath (1996’s Emma), it’s as light as air, paper-thin and completely forgettable. Even so, I have no plans to watch it again in ten years. This review will suffice for 2031, 2041 and beyond.
