Life Happens director Kat Coiro a Miami girl

Kat Coiro is about as local as a local gets. Though born in Manhattan, the 32-year-old director moved to Miami Beach as an elementary school student when her parents, Gina Cunningham and Peter Eves, opened Tap Tap in South Beach. “I used to live above the restaurant,’’ Coiro says. “It was like an old flop house. I remember cleaning it out and setting it up. That area has changed a lot since then.’’

Though her parents sold the famed Haitian hot spot, they remain in Normandy Isle while their daughter finds fame in La-La Land. You can bet they’ll be watching her film, Life Happens, when it opens Friday. Their other daughter, Emmy Eves, who attended DASH, is the art director on the movie. The idea for Life Happens, about a scattered single mom (Krysten Ritter) with two roommates (Kate Bosworth and Rachel Bilson) living in Los Angeles, was hatched about four years ago after Coiro gave birth to a daughter (husband is actor Rhys Coiro, who plays the wayward baby daddy). Ritter — who stars in TV’s Don’t Trust the B in Apartment 23, premiering Wednesday night — is struggling to maintain her party lifestyle, her job working for a diva-ish dog lover (a hysterical Kristen Johnston, Third Rock from the Sun) as well as a love life.

The human-stuffed Baby Bjorn on her back has put a crimp in her plans.

If the plot sounds a little like Three Men and a Baby, minus the men part, you’d be right. “I was the first girl in my friend group to have a baby. In L.A., people wait a long time to have kids,’’ says Coiro, who also has a 7-month-old son. “I was really in this different kind of territory, but I wanted to maintain a level of hipness and coolness and relevancy.’’

Coiro’s initial lack of experience with motherhood inspired the comedy. “Women are expected to know how to do it all, but there’s a learning curve,’’ she says. “This film gives moms a little bit of a break. You weren’t born a perfect mother. You’re going to have a little trouble putting together the pieces of the puzzle together.’’

This story was originally published April 11, 2012 at 2:04 AM with the headline "Life Happens director Kat Coiro a Miami girl."