I Don't Know How She Does It

2011

I Don't Know How She Does It is about Kate (Sarah Jessica Parker) who is a financial executive balancing her blooming career, a husband (Greg Kinear) and two small children. Kate gets her big break and has to travel to New York to work on a project with Jack Abelhammer (Pierce Brosnan) to pitch an idea on a multi-million dollar deal. Her career becomes demanding and she starts spending more time with Jack instead of her husband and family. Tensions start bubbling in her home life and she starts finding it hard to balance a high demanding career and a family that needs her just as much.

There are a lot of reasons why this movie didn't do well. For one it's Sarah Jessica Parker. She's a hit or miss for me, but it doesn't stop me from watching her movies and not because she played Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City. She has a charming quality about her that is hard to ignore. Her problem is is that she seems to have poor chemistry between her leading men in her movies. Or at least that's how I feel about it. She had better chemistry with Pierce Brosnan than her onscreen husband Greg Kinear. Second, I think I remember her saying her husband was 35 years old in the movie. If that's the case, SJP was too old to play this character and so was everyone else.

The trailer didn't sell it enough. I liked the interview scenes of the other characters talking about Kate and what it's like to be a mother and have a family and a working life. They didn't included it in the trailer and I thought it made this movie that much more charming for me. I liked this movie because I am biased. I like chick flicks and chick lit and chick lit turned into chick flicks. Chick lit has a unique style of wit, charm, sarcasm and toe curling conflict that makes you not want to put the book down. It is its own genre and there isn't another style like it that is another genre. Even Jane Austen fits in this category. We all know that Elizabeth Bennet would have been a career woman if she were allowed to be one. The movie juggled stigmas about gender roles and that career women have to be just as much as the perfect mother role and at work be everything but a mother so that it looks like you're pulling your weight. It always seems that the home life always suffers for the career to fit the requirements of such a demanding career. I wonder if actual career women who are mothers actually watched this, or if it was all those housewives or working women who juggle everything. I wouldn't drag any guy to see this. This is a straight up women's only kind of movie. If this genre is your thing and you're looking for a light-hearted, funny and smart movie, this would be one to watch. I warn you now there is no sexual chemistry or any real romance. This is the movie about what happens after you fall in love, marry the guy and start living your happily ever after.