Then She Found Me Movie
Storyline
TAGLINES PLOT SUMMARY
A New York schoolteacher (Hunt) hits a midlife crisis when, in quick succession, her husband leaves, her adoptive mother dies and her real one, an eccentric talk show host, materializes and turns her life upside down as she (April) begins a courtship with the father (Firth) of one of her students.
| Helen Hunt | April Epner |
| Colin Firth | Frank |
| Bette Midler | Bernice Graves |
| Matthew Broderick | Ben |
| Lynn Cohen | Trudy |
| Ben Shenkman | Freddy |
| David Callegati | Gianni |
| Chris Chalk | Orderly |
| Brother Eden Douglas | Penthouse Benefit Guest |
| John Benjamin Hickey | Alan |
| Andy Miller | Limo Driver |
| Tommy Nelson | Jimmy Ray |
| Jonathan Roumie | Partygoer |
| Schuster Vance | Husband at PTA meeting |
| Florence Annequin | Production assistant |
| Helen Hunt |
7.80 out of 10 (66 votes)
Visitor Reviews
Helen Hunt Rewrote the Book
posted on 21 Aug 2009I recently read the book on which this film was based: "Then She Found Me" by Elinor Lipman. For some reason, Helen Hunt decided to rewrite the story and take a likable heroine, who found true love unexpectedly with the school librarian and turn her into an anguished character who struggled with an immature husband (Broderick)who did not appear in the book,a divorced father (Firth), who did not appear in the book, a pregnancy which did not occur in the book, and adopting an Asian child, which also did not occur in the book. The main character in the movie (Hunt) was overwrought, angst-ridden, and not particularly likable; the same character in the book was not like that at all. I enjoyed the book very much; I suffered through the movie.
And Then What?
posted on 13 Aug 2009We've all had our share of bad weeks and I've heard numerous times before that when it rains it pours but yet that still doesn't seem to account for what happened to April Epner (Helen Hunt). A mere ten months into her marriage to Ben (Matthew Broderick), he decides he made a huge mistake. The next day, she goes to work, a school where she and Ben both taught to primary students, to find that he never showed up and is nowhere to be found. Within the week that follows, her adopted mother (Lynn Cohen) dies and her birth mother (Bette Midler) makes contact with her for the first time. It's no wonder the bags under April's eyes are so heavy.Hunt's directorial debut, THEN SHE FOUND ME, begins so tragically but attempts then to lighten the mood with awkward comedy and untimely romance. The combination is a bizarre contradiction that just falls flat. It doesn't feel right to laugh just yet as there hasn't been time to mourn but we don't want to mourn either as we only just met these folks. We don't know how to feel or where to go and neither does the direction of the film. When the dust from April's disastrous week finally begins to settle, the film finally begins to breathe normally again and finds a particular charm in its decidedly neurotic voice. Still, it is more unsettling than it is satisfying.While Hunt may be overly sentimental as a director, she finds a certain harshness in her acting style that becomes the film's most unifying source. As put upon as she is at this juncture in her life, she manages to juggle everything reasonably well by balancing between protecting herself, demanding what she deserves and allowing her defenses down at just the right moments and only to those who deserve entry. The woman deserves happiness, be that in the form of a new love with troubled suitor, Frank (Colin Firth), or by realizing her longtime desire to have a child, but her life only gets continuously more complicated, sometimes by her own doing. I would ordinarily want to hug someone in April's position but mostly I just wanted to shake her.What ultimately undermines THEN SHE FOUND ME is its own air of self-loathing. Hunt spends so much time trying to incite sympathy for April by dumping so many hard realities on to her at once but then punishes her when all she has done is try to keep her head above water. It's hard to feel love for a face on the screen when the woman who put her there hasn't made up her mind herself.
Pleasant directorial debut from Helen Hunt
posted on 13 Aug 2009The first forty or so minutes of "Then She Found Me" are quite excellent, with Hunt showing impressive skill for a rookie director, the score standing out as quite good, and the acting being very good. The script is surprisingly funny for the most part, and has a sense of authenticity and realism that works in favor of the film. The main problem with the film going past the halfway mark is that little of any real interest is happening, and nothing really stands out. It's still amusing, still well-made, still not a bad film by any stretch of imagination, but there's also absolutely nothing that left me wanting to see it again.6.5/10
My Review
posted on 11 Aug 2009April Epner (Helen Hunt) has had a very rough life. She was adopted at an early age, her adopted mother just passed away, and she's getting a divorce from her husband Ben (Matthew Broderick).Nothing seems to be going her way, until she meets Frank (Colin Firth), a single father to two children she teaches. She begins to fall for him, and out of the blue she gets news that her real mother, Bernice (Bette Midler) wants to find her. Bernice is a well-known person in the town, hosting a talk show there.Soon April's life spirals more out of control as she struggles with who she really is, what the truth is, and who she really loves.Helen Hunt did a spectacular job in directing and acting in this film, spending most of it without makeup, daring to show how she really looks without hours of professional makeup, thus making her story all the more poignant. And through all the troubles April goes through (some she couldn't help, some of her own doing), you just feel so bad for her and wonder how it will all have a happy ending. Definitely worth a viewing.
Wretched Script Cannot Be Redeemed by All Star Cast
posted on 06 Jul 2009"Then She Found Me" is a wretched movie, and it should not be. The talent here is undeniable: Helen Hunt, Colin Firth, Matthew Broderick, Bette Midler. The problem? An unforgivably awful script. Can anyone in Hollywood read? Hollywood is a world capital of entertainment, of magic; there is so much talent there. And yet, year after year, these awful scripts are greenlighted and talented writers starve. What gives?The main character, April Epner (Helen Hunt) is never fleshed out. What we do know about her makes her incredibly unappealing. She's obsessed with her plump, middle-aged, boy-man husband (Broderick) who has left her to live in his mother's house. April is shrill and rude to her dying mother. She's manipulative and callow in her interactions with Colin Firth, the man all sensible women love and would treat like the treasure he is. In a particularly painful scene, Frank (Firth) makes a poignant confession of love to April, and she blows him off in order to gripe to her husband in a cell phone call. I was literally shouting at the screen, "Run, Colin, run! Get away from this nasty loser female as fast as ever you can!" It doesn't stop there. April attempts to have a quickie with her husband in the back seat of a car. On a busy city street. In broad daylight. With the car door open. It was such an ugly, gratuitous scene. It marked April as someone suffering from borderline personality disorder. But it doesn't stop there. April casually invites both her husband and her boyfriend to her gynecologist's office for an exam, in stirrups and johnny coat, to ascertain that she is pregnant, by her husband. WHY should we care about this woman? Why should Colin Firth be attracted to her? What inspired his poignant love confession? Nothing. There is nothing on screen, nothing in the script, that ever fleshes his attraction out.Speaking of "flesh" … if you read comments here or on the web, you can see that most viewers were fixated on how haggard Helen Hunt looks. She is very thin, and time has not been kind to her face. In some scenes, it is impossible to look at her and not want to sit her down and get some food into her, she looks that much like a refugee from some catastrophe. Some viewers applauded Hunt for being "brave" and allowing the camera access, but focusing on Helen Hunt's courage utterly detracts from ever registering April Epner as a flesh and blood human being. You're not thinking about April Epner, you're thinking, "Hmm…how could Helen Hunt change her look?" Similarly, Bette Midler is never convincing as the character she is playing. She is always Bette Midler, bodacious saloon singer, breezing through a film with a script that is decidedly unworthy of any attempt on her part to bother to pretend to be anyone but Bette Midler.Failed films like this are so painful because there are so few movies made for women over forty. The glory days that could produce a script like Mankiewicz's "All About Eve" are long behind us. Drek like this make us miss classics like that all the more. Older women do lead interesting lives. There are so many real questions that this film could have explored for a forty-plus schoolteacher whose husband wants to leave her. This film ignored all of those real questions and just plopped Colin Firth, the perfect man, and Bette Midler, STAR, in as phony, bogus attempts to stir up some kind of a plot. Sorry – without writing talent and insight, which this script utterly lacks – even starpower like Firth's and Middler's can't create a worthy film.
Sorry, but I think it was just an awful film and.....
posted on 06 Jul 2009I want my 2 hours back! I rented this movie with hopes of seeing a movie I could relate to being that I am a single and without children. Instead I saw a ridiculous piecemeal of a movie that is mostly unbelievable. The emotional connections between all the characters didn't make sense, i.e. how any of them continued having anything to do with each other given the inability any of them have to carry on a mature (not in the sexual way, which happens plenty often in this movie) relationship. And how any man found April attractive despite the constant befuddled expression on her face (maybe she was trying to be like a young Meg Ryan--a rare woman that was able to be cute in doing that look) as well as the nervous tapping of her forehead is beyond me. The only real fun there was in watching this movie was in Bette Midler's character, which after a short time seemed ridiculously misplaced in this movie. Even if I consider the fact that this was a human drama, of which I really appreciate in theater, it doesn't change the fact that it was poorly put together. Sorry Helen Hunt--I am still a big fan of your TV show, Mad About You, but I think you should stick to acting with a different director. But don't feel bad---hardly anything coming out of Hollywood is really commendable.
Take you mom or wait for the DVD
posted on 20 Jun 2009So I saw this film at the SXSW Film Festival. The thing that people really like about these festivals is that not only do they get to see movies before everyone else, you get to have Q&As after the film with the director or some of the actors. Well, Helen Hunt did show up at the screening and spent 90 seconds introducing the film which she directed and was the main character. In the introduction, she said that when you are in a festival like this one, you're all of a sudden are considered "hip" and that she needed to be hip. This is her DIRECTORIAL DEBUT. She spent 10 years trying to get this film made and she didn't even stay for a Q&A. I still wonder why she even bothered to show up. Everyone was sitting there waiting for the Q&A to begin when a lady came out to announce that there would not be a Q&A. Everyone couldn't believe it. There was nothing hip about that and the film's lackluster characters were only saved by Bette Midler who plays her long lost mother and provides most the laughs. This melodrama would be a great gift to take your mom on Mother's Day, however considering the time and effort put into it by Helen Hunt, I would expect something more hip.
This movie manages to be turgid and silly at the same time
posted on 07 May 2009"Then She Found Me" is an insult to the intelligence. At least with the "American Pie" and "Saw" franchises you know what you're in for. A cast like this leads one to expect some degree of quality -- or at least coherence. Wrong! Helen Hunt is an unsmiling, self-absorbed, masochistically willing victim. Matthew Broderick is meant to be a feckless Peter Pan but doesn't convey a scintilla of that. Bette Midler is woefully miscast in a role that completely ignores her comedic and dramatic talents. Colin Firth's character -- also grumpy and funereal in demeanor -- acts and reacts entirely without plausible motivation. John Benjamin Hickey flits around enigmatically like some latter-day Tinker Bell. It's as if all the characters were just put in front of the camera without directorial discussion of the movie's message, plot or intent. I'm not sure it's fair to blame Hunt (as director) because the screenplay is unrelievedly lousy. Not only is it poorly plotted, the "cute" dialog is in fact just plain dumb. This film will appeal only to those willing to suspend even subatomic levels of disbelief.
Life is the thing movies are made of, and this will seem very real for some.
posted on 05 May 2009I found there to be truth in the fact that even in a small group of people, each had their own personal take on the same issue. For some reason, we need to know where we came from, almost as bad as where we are going.This is a movie that will move and entertain those that most relate to the problem. Especially if you have been responsible for the birth of a child that you have never made contact with, for whatever reason. The story line is also quirky enough to keep one interested.The one character that I especially had a hard time relating to was played by one of my favorite actors, Matthew Broderick. He has a Neil Simon rhythm that maybe he can't get away from.I really did like the way the movie allowed you the viewer to fill in the blanks for some things that other movies feel that they just can't take that chance. The eyes never lie. If you watch the young girl in Whale Ride you will know what I mean. In this movie, one of the leads just comes so close to being honest, and then she has to screw it up with acting. It is a small thing, but it is the essence of the character.Still enjoyed the movie.
Good Films, Like Life and Love, Can be Flawed.
posted on 11 Apr 2009The director rushes through some life altering events without allowing her character to learn the inherit lessons. Before April has time to digest that her husband has left her, she meets a possible soul mate - the father of one of her students. The film seems to say that love doesn't come in a neat little package or even at a good time. Love is messy - full of human weakness and flaws. In this case, the package comes with extra baggage. Colin Firth is vulnerable and sexy as the recently dumped father. Helen Hunt gives an honest, nuanced performance. The is one of most romantic relationships I've seen in a very long time. April's birth mother (typical Bette Midler) turns up to show how really flawed love can be.
Helen Hunt writes, directs, produces and stars in ... adopted adult finding her birth mother.
posted on 09 Apr 2009I have been a Helen Hunt fan for 25 years, since I saw her in the 1983 "Quarterback Princess." She was good in her TV series, and is good in one of my favorite movies, "As Good As It Gets." With this movie she writes, produces, directs, and stars, and pulls it off quite well, in what is a very complicated story.Here Helen Hunt is April Epner, adopted daughter of Jewish parents, and having been friends with fellow teacher Ben Green, played by Matthew Broderick. She is rapidly approaching 40 (actually 45 now) and wants to have children. She and Ben get married, but not long after he decides that he just doesn't like where that life is leading and they break up. She is hit hard by this development.Then, following quickly her adopted mom dies, and she gets contacted by someone who claims to be her birth mother. Plus, she meets what seems like a very nice single guy who has two kids at her school.Bette Midler is local talk show hostess Bernice Graves, who initially claims she is April's birth mom, and the dad is now deceased actor Steve McQueen. Colin Firth is Frank, the nice guy she meets.SPOILERS: April, 6 weeks after her breakup with Ben, and one night after she first slept with Frank, turns up pregnant. It is Ben's baby, their sex on the breakup night. In a funny scene April, Frank, and Ben all show up at the OBGYN for the first ultrasound. But at the second visit, there is no heartbeat, the fetus has not survived. Meanwhile April is dealing with Bernice, who keeps telling her certain untruths about April's history, including who her father really is. And, she and Frank keep improving their relationship. Eventually April does what she said she would ever do, she adopted a baby from Asia. It looks like she and Frank and the now three kids will become a family.
A Very Modern Woman
posted on 05 Apr 2009This is a realistic portrayal of people in everyday situations. Things change quickly, decisions are made with the best of intentions but don't always turn out for the best. Life can be messy, Helen's character has to find ways to make the puzzle pieces fit even when they don't.Helen Hunt has talent. In this movie, she stars, directs, has a hand in the script. It is nice to see things from a woman's perspective. Slightly reminiscent of Sex in the City, life in New York is fast paced, confusing, frustrating. But there is hope, there is redemption, there are second chances. That is what this movie is about and what makes it enjoyable.POSSIBLE SPOILER: It has a happy ending.
Excellent sleeper many wont see coming
posted on 22 Mar 2009I am a fan of the independents, little miss sunshine, juno, you know the searchlight films. I often go to this independent theater to see these kinds of movies, and they never disappoint.The one question I do have about this movie is how is Matthew Broderick a comparison for Colin Firth? While both fine actors, Matthew's character has decided to go another way, slept with her one more time and then went to live with her mother. While she remains a heartbroken school teacher going to school the next day as if she didn't need a day or two to collect what has happened, she meets Colin Firth as he is a father of one of her students.The passion between Colin Firth and Helen Hunt is very believable, it seems like love at first sight. He has angry moments, but they are in response to sometime bad decisions on Helen's part. You just feel that he truly cares about Helen, he calls her gorgeous, he seems to be there for her. He has his own demons about his recent divorce from a woman that abandoned her children and left him sleep deprived and annoyed.Enter Bette Midler, a somewhat pathological biological mother to her whom she finds after her adopted mother passes.In the end Helen will choose if she wants to keep contact with her mother, which man she needs in her life, and the decisions that she needs to make to procreate, enough to get away from her own demons from her childhood.Excellent film, genuine emotion, and well crafted characters that you can feel yourself relating to. A must see.
Then we were all drama queens
posted on 22 Mar 2009Helen Hunt has put together a good cast for her debut as a director in this romcom in which she also stars. Alas, the screenplay by Alice Arlen and Victor Levin tries too hard and winds up with chopped liver. In its opening sequence, a schoolteacher named April Epner (Hunt) gets married to a colleague named Ben (Mathew Broderick, in klutzy mode) in a Jewish wedding with all the trappings. On screen the marriage hardly lasts as long as the ceremony. Before you know it, Ben's moving back with his mother, April's adoptive mother (Lynn Cohen) dies, and April meets a handsome Brit called Frank (Colin Firth) with an absentee wife and two young children, who're at her school. That's sufficient to put April in a tizzy, but it isn't enough to satisfy Arlen and Levin. Their compulsion to jazz things up leads them to introduce Bette Midler, as famous talk show hostess Bernice Graves, who declares herself to be the 39-year-old April's birth mother--and precedes to tell several serious lies. This is quickly followed by April's surprise pregnancy, which turns out to be due to Ben. And was something she has fervently declared she wants: the old "biological clock" thing.Everybody in this story is a drama queen regardless of sex but Ms. Midler is the queen of the queens. Bette is, well, Bette, besides which her character as written is narcissistic and over-the-top intrusive. She has no restraint or tact and loses all credibility with April and, incidentally, with the audience. This subplot only brings out how unconvincing all these characters are. For all we know, every one of them may be lying to April with Bette just the one who gets busted. But she's the worst: all she has going for her is that smile, which is more like a smirk. Only if you're a hard core Midler fan will you tolerate this character and like this movie.April is suspicious and stressed out. Understandable feelings in the context, certainly; but still, she's surprisingly mean to Bernice, given that the minute a DNA test confirms their relationship she's confiding in her about Frank and Ben and everything else. When Bernice is shampooing the newly pregnant April in a bath tub Bette drops the smirk from her face and the chirp from her voice and you wonder if it's the same person--or the right reel. At the screening I saw, it wasn't. But when the missing one was shown, the transition still didn't make sense. Ben (a decidedly unattractive Broderick) is the passive sort of drama queen, the kind that just can't cope--or decide anything. Frank declares that he's perfect, and he and April, after one or two dates at most, declare undying love, but he has a major shouting hissy fit after April has a moment of almost-sex with Ben, feelings for Ben having been stirred up understandably, sort of, by the sense that he is at least the sperm donor. Both Frank and Ben have showed up for an ultrasound performed, believe it or not, by Salmon Rushdie. Perhaps they wanted to meet the author of 'The Satanic Verses.' I wondered how Firth felt delivering some of his lines. His air of composure sits ill with the out of control things Frank is given to say from his first appearance on screen.It's hard to say what all this is about (besides a degeneration of the style of Nora Ephron). Confusion, certainly. Helen Hunt is a beautiful woman, as Colin Firth tells her, but she looks strained and worried all the time. Is this a comedy or a nervous breakdown? She also looks older than 39, and she is: the actress is actually 45. Matthew Broderick has moments when he seems the best actor of the lot, probably because his Ben is the only character who is not overdrawn. But Ben too is forced to telegraph his emotions verbally. This is simply a screenplay that doesn't trust itself--or the actors--for anything; nor are they allowed to trust each other. Bette Midler, like Colin Firth, has an aria or two. She has to practically scream to get through to the resistant Helen Hunt. Everybody talks too loud and too fast.Since the issue of birth mothers is brought up, it's hard not to think of David O. Russell's hilarious 'Flirting with Disaster'--and to find this version wanting. As for the breakup/meet cute/breakup sex/rebound theme, it's weakened by Broderick's paucity of lines (even though that does allow him to seem momentarily a person and not just pages from a script). Even more, it's interrupted by the birth-mother theme, which has no redeeming features. As a result no theme is well developed, and it's hard to separate what is funny from what is simply embarrassing. 'Flirting with Disaster' works so well partly because it's a road movie, and each change of venue feels significant and fresh and funny in new ways. 'Then She Found Me' doesn't go anywhere with its colorless locations that drift uninterestingly from school to restaurant to doctor's office--they just provide sitcom backgrounds for sitcom actions.This is a glossy Hollywood product with name actors nonetheless, and it delves into themes fans of romantic comedy tend to like, so people will like it. Hunt, Midler, Firth, and Broderick perform their sometimes far-fetched speeches with a good deal of conviction. Hunt particularly gives her all,and is very present for her lines. One could imagine this character in a movie about something real. Firth is suave without seeming slick; he'd be good in a better light comedy, and he's been in a couple, such as 'The Importance of Being Earnest' and 'Love, Actually.' Midler is fun to watch, but seeing her here only reminds one of better (or at least funnier) things she's done like 'Down and Out in Beverly Hills' and 'Beaches.' 'Then She Found Me' fails because of its writing, which doesn't recall anything you wouldn't have gladly forgotten.
You will find a lovely, humane film when you seek this one out!
posted on 10 Mar 2009April (Helen Hunt), a schoolteacher married to fellow instructor, Ben (Matthew Broderick), wants to become a mother above everything else. As she was adopted by a Jewish family, with no knowledge of her parents, having a blood relative is extremely important to her. So, even though her overbearing mother is always suggesting she adopt a Chinese orphan girl, April resists the idea. But, wait. On the day April dons a negligee, under a trenchcoat, to further a romantic encounter with her husband, he drops a bomb. He is "not happy" with his present life and wants a change. Nevertheless, when he finally realizes she is in sexy nightwear, they make love before he walks out, due to raging hormones. The next day, April's mother dies. Needless to say, April is in turmoil. Yet, in short order, she makes the acquaintance of Frank (Colin Firth), the father of one of her students, Jimmie Ray. Poor Frank has also had the bad luck to have his wife run off with an globe-trotting artist, leaving him as the custodial parent to Jimmie Ray and little Ruby. Before they even realize what is happening, April and Frank start a tentative relationship. Then, unbelievably, April learns she is pregnant, with Ben's child and that her birth mother, Bernice (Bette Midler), a television talk show hostess, wants to enter her life again. In a tornado of emotional stress, such as this, how will April begin her life again? This is a lovely, sharply-drawn look at the human condition. It features wonderful performances all around, under Hunt's careful direction. Hunt herself gives a beautifully nuanced turn as the good-hearted but confused April while Broderick does a great job as the repugnant Ben. Midler is also a pleasure to watch as a woman with a thousand secrets. As for Firth, is doubtful anyone could have played his role better, as his handsome face, arresting voice, and charming nature make Frank a very memorable creature. All of the flick's production niceties, such as costumes, sets, and photography, are terrific, too. Want more? After an amazing story, the ending will have any viewer in happy tears. In brief, do find this lovely movie in the near future. You will be clapping and cheering with your fellow viewers at film's end.
Enough offbeat choices by fledgling director Hunt work to make this absorbing
posted on 18 Feb 2009Despite the Hallmark ending, this is not what I would consider a romantic comedy. It is a biological-clock-ticking-at-the-worst-possible-moment movie. It is a life-turned-inside-out-and-upside-down-and-then-she-found-me movie. From the settings and the lack of make-up to the dowdy clothes and the spartan folk-rock music, Helen Hunt's life is devoid of an ounce of glamor - until Bette Midler shows up - and then it doesn't do hunt any good anyway. I found all the performances exceptionally good. Unlike others, I thought Broderick's supporting turn was perfect as the man-child with an appealing grin who will never be a mensch. In fact the actress playing his mother conveyed everything we needed to know about their relationship in two lines and 30 minutes on camera. That is the hallmark of superb cooperation between actor and director.I must disclose that I have not been a particular Helen Hunt fan as a motion picture actress. I thought she was still playing Jamie Buckman, only not as convincingly, when she won bast actress for As Good As It Gets. I did not care fora her in Cast Away, Hurricane, Dr. T and the Women, Curse of the Jade Scorpion, and at least one or two others that I can't think of offhand. I thought the best film performance I had seen her give was in Pay It Forward -- until now. Acting in your directorial debut is not generally a good idea. However, Director Hunt gets the best and most realistic performance I'd ever seen from actor Hunt. As for the rest of the cast, there was only one flaw: John Benjamin Hickey was all schtick as Midler's assistant and seem to miss the movie's tone entirely, giving no context for his character's betrayal of Midler. Everyone else was between very good and superb, especially Lynn Cohen in her brief-but-poignant role as April's mother, the actor playing April's brother, the "natural-chid" doctor (I forgot his name), and the always dependable Colin Firth as April's peripatetic love interest. Salman Rushdie as the doctor was fine. Midler, of course, was charged with providing the absurdly larger-than-life counterpoint to Hunt's otherwise submergence in relentless hard knocks. She does so with an amazingly successful combination of gusto and restraint, conveying marvelously the awkward steamrolling she is giving her birth daughter as the second-tier celebrity trying to make up for lost time.As for the script, it mixed some great poignantly ironic dialog with some out-of-left-field dialog, and mostly real-life dialog in sequences sometimes slowed by three-too-many montage sequences. It had a few things that one needed a leap of faith to follow but never so dense that it couldn't be followed. Overall, a pretty good first effort for screenwriter Hunt if not up to the standards of actor Hunt and director Hunt in this film.Bottom line: this isn't a perfect film, but it is a very good one and well worth watching.
Then She Found Her Defies Discovery **1/2
posted on 10 Feb 2009Helen Hunt directs this movie.Helen Hunt is supposed to be a modern Orthodox Jewess even though she rides around in a car on Saturday. This is where this weakly written film goes wrong. Ms. Hunt is not Jewish and she cannot convey the feeling of belonging to the religion. Similarly, Bette Midler, who is Jewish in real life, plays her real non-Jewish mother but acts like a typical Jewish mother.Too much is going on here. Hunt's 10 month marriage to Matthew Broderick collapses. (Broderick is married in real life to Jewish actress Sarah Jessica Parker) but he is not Jewish and it's showing in his lackluster performance. Not only does her marriage fade, she loses her adopted mother and finds instant romance with Colin Firth, whose children attend the school that she teaches in. At first, I thought I was going to view another "Heartbreak Kid" when a Jewish marriage goes awry and by the end our Jewish fellow marries in a church.The ridiculous though plausible thing happens. Hunt learns that she is pregnant by her husband.Of course, we realize that Hunt is meant for the Christian Firth and the movie has to find a sad way to lead to that phenomenon.Midler is wasted here. You think that as the real mother she would break out but that never happens and the idea that Steve McQueen was Hunt's father is preposterous to put it mildly.Despite the lie that Midler has told to Hunt, the two will try to build a relationship and that's also hard to fathom after a while.This film is disappointing as there are too many plots and problems associated with them.
Aging process
posted on 10 Feb 2009What we seem to have forgotten in this country is that people age physically and emotionally. Both are beautiful journeys. Because we are women, we don't seem to get the benefit of having the first journey. Only men are allowed to age physically and still be deemed "attractive." I loved this movie. It is about real people!!!! I think it is irrelevant as to why Helen Hunt looks the way she does in the movie. If she's like that in real life, so what!!! If she did it for the movie, it was very effective; if she really looks that way in real life, then it is just the normal aging process we all go through--even women who are movie stars.
Unspectacular life drama
posted on 04 Feb 2009The movie is nothing really great, without it being bad. It's what I call a life drama, in other words a life story that tries to be as realistic as possible while maintaining the maximum level of drama. It does have a subject, though, and if you want me to summarize it, it would be a romance between 40ish divorcées.This film could very well be very special for said demographic, but for me it meant close to nothing. All actors looked really old and decrepit. Never has Helen Hunt looked so tired, her normal slim figure now just skinny, her bland face turning stern. Colin Firth looked fat and old, while Matthew Broderick had white hair and a huge stomach. You remember him... he's the child in WarGames!Bottom line: a romantic movie for your mom.
Deserves a look
posted on 27 Aug 2009Seen at a September 2007 Toronto Film Festival screening.First time director, Helen Hunt, said this movie was 10 years in the making. Her passion for the film and subject matter is evident, but also sets her up for her biggest downfall. She indulges the movie (her baby) which is interesting given this is relationship themed (mother/ daughter). Had she struck closer to that thread, the movie would have a tighter, more focused feel.As it is, the outer reach of her film, a foray into her intimate, romantic relationships, with the intent of colouring her main character (April) instead seems like an untrained hand that colours outside of the lines. As a movie director, if this was her greatest weakness; I still give her kudos for doing a pretty good job. The woman took on a heavy load: first time directing, co-producer, co-writing the screenplay, and acting in the main role, all done on a 27 day shoot schedule! I almost feel guilty for any criticism.At the post-screening Q&A Ms Hunt told us that the original story centred exclusively on the mother/daughter relationship. She wrote in the characters of Ben, her passive husband (Matthew Broderick) and Frank, her 'quickest rebound in history' mate (Colin Firth) herself. Understandablly she wants to add subtext to April's world and all the issues she's dealing with, but I felt somewhat 'pinballed' from scene to scene without feeling a smooth transition. A little more editing of these extra layers would help.I can't leave it unsaid that what repeatedly struck me was why April loved her husband and continued to connect with him. He was such a shallow and thoughtless person. To me, that particular character was the weakest link in the movie.Overall, I found many funny and poignant moments in the movie and think it deserves a look by a larger audience.