I Don't Know How She Does It 
 
 'I Don't Know How She Does It' review: Sarah Jessica Parker is married & harried in romantic comedy 
 
 Craig Blankenhorn/Weinstein Co. Sarah Jessica Parker must answer to boss Pierce Brosnan in "I Don't Know How She Does It." 
 
 With Sarah Jessica Parker, Pierce Brosnan. Romantic comedy about a stressed-out working mother. Director: Douglas McGrath (1:35). PG-13: Language, mild sexuality. At area theaters. 
 
 If anyone out there is desperate for another "Sex and the City" sequel (anyone?), fear not: In "I Don't Know How She Does It," Carrie Bradshaw finally settles down and raises a family. 
 
 Well, not technically. 
 
 Sarah Jessica Parker is actually playing a character named Kate Reddy, who originated in a best-selling novel by Allison Pearson. But from the wry narration to the girlish mannerisms, Parker really does turn this film into "Sex and the Kiddies." 
 
 On the bright side, it's a lot more watchable than its awful trailer indicates. Director Douglas McGrath ("Emma") and screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna (The Devil Wears Prada") are both pros, with a crucial sense of empathy toward their hapless heroine. 
 
 A mother of two, Kate is an investment manager whose demanding job perpetually requires impossible decisions: Does she please her husband, Richard (Greg Kinnear), or her bosses, Clark (Kelsey Grammer) and Jack (Pierce Brosnan)? Can she buy a deli pie for her daughter's bake sale, or does she have to make one from scratch? 
 
 While Olivia Munn, Christina Hendricks and Jane Curtin nail their roles as Kate's assistant, best friend and disapproving mother-in-law, the male actors - including Seth Meyers as her competitor - are afterthoughts. Only the always-reliable Brosnan finds some depth in his underwritten role. 
 
 Then again, this is very much Kate's story, and much to their credit the filmmakers refuse to judge any of her choices. 
 
 They do wrap things up with superficial ease, but they also find plenty of humor and poignancy in parenthood. 
 
 At the same time, they never shy away from the worry, guilt and criticisms so many working mothers experience. (If anything, they're too hard on stay-at-home moms, as represented by a vapid Busy Philipps.) 
 
 Unfortunately, Parker infuses Kate - a nonstop mess who's constantly apologizing - with such frantic insecurity that she comes across more as an anxious twentysomething than a 40-year-old mother. It's Hendricks who provides the welcome maturity, and I couldn't help wishing she had been given the lead. 
 
 But as Richard reminds his harried wife, "Sometimes okay has to be good enough." 
 
 Magic Moment: Any parent who's ever sung a lullaby over the phone will connect when Kate serenades her daughter with "A Bushel and a Peck." 

 Thwarted by the same awkward timing that zonked "Confessions of a Shopaholic" two years ago, just when shopaholics began to seem extra-heinous, the film version of "I Don't Know How She Does It" doesn't know how to do what I think it's trying to do. 
 
 I think it's trying to acknowledge the real-world pressures shaping millions of women's work/life to-do lists. 
 
 When the investment firm wizard played by Sarah Jessica Parker tells a colleague she got into fund management because people today are "scared to death about their future," it's meant sincerely, and Parker — even in a disposable comedy with a puddinglike consistency and the aftertaste of something other than real sugar — does not oversell it. 
 
 Her comic and dramatic technique is formidable. If she can survive "Did You Hear About the Morgans?" and the second "Sex and the City" movie, she can survive anything. 
 
 Freely adapting Allison Pearson's 2002 London-set best-seller, adjusted to Boston and New York locales and a tougher economy, screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna has the devil's own time juggling agendas. It's the same for Kate Reddy, the Parker character, who must negotiate time-sucking work projects; a backbiting rival (Seth Meyers) and a demanding boss (Kelsey Grammer); the sweet attentions of a high-powered colleague played by Pierce Brosnan; and a tightly packed calendar involving two kids, a nanny and her super-easygoing-but-there's-a-limit husband, an underemployed architect played by Greg Kinnear. 
 
 The movie concerns three especially chaotic months in Kate's life. In addition to direct-address bits to the camera, the script relies largely on Kate's musings in voice-over, whisking us back in spirit to the comparatively carefree days of Parker in "Sex and the City" (which, on television, let's remember, was often wonderful). 
 
 But the comedy's forced and rather forlorn in "I Don't Know How She Does It." We first see Kate, who's Type-Triple-A, as she desperately repackages a store-bought pie for a bake sale to make it seem homemade. Old joke; no new spin. Each supporting character gets placed into her own little box, labeled "shrill, stay-at-home, exercise-mad mom" (Busy Philipps plays the queen of the elliptical machines) or "generically supportive best pal" (Christina Hendricks) or "workaholic assistant reminiscent of Emily Blunt in 'The Devil Wears Prada'" (Olivia Munn as Kate's driven aide-de-camp, Momo). 
 
 "The inside of a working woman's mind," one line goes, "is like the control tower at O'Hare Airport." True, and yet doesn't that sort of generica belong to the era of "9 to 5"? "I Don't Know How She Does It" condescends inadvertently to its female characters even as it flatters their juggling abilities. The story lacks the wit to say something about double standards or gender politics in a crummy economy. While on a business trip to Cleveland, Kate and the neutered version of Big played by Brosnan take a night off from their spreadsheets to go bowling with an alley full of working-class stiffs. (So that's where the middle class went — Cleveland!) This bit has a strange aftertaste; it plays as a ploy to "humanize" the socioeconomically advantaged. 
 
 Also, for a movie largely about temptation, "I Don't Know How She Does It" has a weirdly low sexual current. Whenever Kate and her husband argue about their dangerously low rate of intercourse or some other matter, the stakes seem low, the friction frictionless. The Brosnan character apparently has been keeping himself chaste all these years (since the loss of his wife) for That Girl — sorry, Carrie Bradshaw — sorry, Kate Reddy. I enjoy a lot of these performers. But performers can do only so much to specify what is not specific, or vivid. Near the end there's a series of glimpses of Parker and Kinnear beaming (high-beaming, really) at each other from across a crowded room. As much as I like those two, even in reduced circumstances, those shots are enough to make you urp. 
 
 mjphillips@tribune.com 
 
 'I Don't Know How She Does It' -- 2 stars 
 
 MPAA rating: PG-13 (R (for sexual content and language) 
 
 Cast: Sarah Jessica Parker (Kate Reddy); Greg Kinnear (Richard); Christina Hendricks (Allison); Olivia Munn (Momo); Pierce Brosnan (Jack Abelhammer); Kelsey Grammer (Clark); Seth Meyers (Chris Bunce); Jane Curtin (Marla) 
 
 Credits: Directed by Douglas McGrath; written by Aline Brosh McKenna, based on the novel by Allison Pearson; produced by Donna Gigliotti. A Weinstein Co. release. Running time: 1:35.
– Don’t expect any surprises in I Don’t Know How She Does It, a Sarah Jessica Parker-led flick about a working mom that's not faring all that well with the critics: It’s back to Carrie Bradshaw, writes Elizabeth Weitzman in the New York Daily News. “From the wry narration to the girlish mannerisms, Parker really does turn this film into Sex and the Kiddies.” But the movie finds “plenty of humor and poignancy in parenthood.” The film stays “safely within the well-established parameters of formulaic romantic comedies,” writes Michael Rechtshaffen at The Hollywood Reporter. Still, it “should prove relatable to female audiences of a certain age and stage.” Other critics are less forgiving. “This vacuous farce has nothing original to say about marriage, working parenthood, child-rearing, or corporate America,” writes Claudia Puig in USA Today. And Michael Phillips, writing in the Chicago Tribune, calls it “a disposable comedy with a puddinglike consistency and the aftertaste of something other than real sugar.”