Then She Found Me

Dir: Helen Hunt

Rating: 4.1  |  0 User Reviews  |  Send to Friend

By Lauren Macaluso

Many successful actors have utilized their fame as a ticket to get behind the camera. Once there, however, it's always a crap-shoot. We’ve seen it done more or less successfully, a la Robert DeNiro's A Bronx Tale and pretty miserably, as in Billy Crystal's Forget Paris and anything Kevin Costner ever made, but what actress Helen Hunt is lacking here is coherence. You're never entirely sure what it is she's trying to achieve; tonally, she's all over the map. She also stars in the film as April, an almost-over-the-hill schoolteacher who has just divorced her husband, Ben (Matthew Broderick), over the stress of not being able to conceive a child. Conveniently enough, she is then able to meet a student’s father (Colin Firth) who also happens to be going through a separation. If all of this weren't enough, April’s adoptive mother dies and the next day she is reconnected with her birth mother, Bernice (Bette Midler), a hyper-enthusiastic talk-show host. Each character in April’s life brings a different spin to the film, but, at the same time, seems to wipe out any previously established narrative drive. The script, an adaptation of the novel by Elinor Lipman, differs from the novel in that the book's main focus is about April and her biological mother finding each other and developing an unlikely relationship. In the film, however, the characters played by Broderick and Firth -- who do not appear in the novel -- are entirely chimerical. The bland script offers them little opportunity to flesh out their characters, though one suspects, even if the script were better, its doubtful Firth, in particular, would be able to deliver anything of much greater substance. You can actually feel just how badly Hunt and the actors want the film to come together into a touching portrayal of dealing with life’s ups and downs. Unfortunately, desire is not enough.

The DVD includes director’s commentary with Helen Hunt, cast interviews, and a behind-the-scenes featurette.

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