Then She Found Me
September. 07,2007 RA New York schoolteacher hits a midlife crisis when, in quick succession, her husband leaves, her adoptive mother dies and her biological mother, an eccentric talk show host, materializes and turns her life upside down as she begins a courtship with the father of one of her students.
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Lack of good storyline.
The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.
Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.
The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.
April Epner, a nearly 40-year old Jewish woman, is going through a crisis in her life.Her husband Ben leaves her and her adoptive mother dies.Then a talk show host called Bernice Graves is introduced to her as her biological mother.And she meets a new man named Frank at the school she teaches his two children.Then She Found Me (2007) is the directorial debut by actress Helen Hunt.She gives a great performance in the lead as April Epner.Bette Midler is terrific as Bernice Graves.Colin Firth is marvelous as Frank.Matthew Broderick, who turned 50 a couple of months ago, does very nice work as Ben Green.Ben Shenkman is great as Dr. Freddy Epner.Salman Rushdie, who is better known as a writer, does very good work as Dr. Samani.Lynn Cohen plays April's adoptive mother Trudy, and she's very good.As themselves in this movie are seen Janeane Garofalo, Tim Robbins and Edie Falco.This is a nice, yet flawed movie.The drama of it works pretty good, it's quite moving.But it doesn't go out to make some movie history.It doesn't succeed in rising above mediocrity.But it's a pretty nice little movie that proves Helen Hunt can also direct.
If "Then She Found Me" got any real notice when it came out, it certainly passed by me. I didn't know what to expect when I chose the streaming video version, mainly because I've always liked Helen Hunt, and she's backed by a pretty impressive cast. Although it's certainly no blockbuster, the film is well worth seeing. Since it is immediately disclosed, I don't feel I'm spoiling anything in saying that Hunt plays the part of an adopted woman whose marriage at age 39 fails almost immediately because her groom (Matthew Broderick) is completely immature. Hunt's character (April Hepner) is unexpectedly confronted by her birth mother (Bette Midler) and also finds herself in a potentially romantic relationship with Frank (Colin Firth), a single father with two children whose wife left the family to travel around the world with her lover. April desperately wants to have a child, and time is quickly running out. Complications ensue on several fronts -- with her birth mother, with the husband from whom she is separated, and with Frank and Frank's kids. Hunt directed this film and co-wrote the script. Although she's a little old to be 39 again, she's still slim, beautiful, a skilled comic actress and believable in a serious, emotionally wrenching role. I can't give the movie more than a 6 but I liked it. The ending, which I won't describe, is plausible but a little too abrupt. However, I'll concede that filling the gap could not have been done quickly. And that's a potent argument for ending it without an explanation as they chose to do.
Most moviegoers have seen Helen Hunt's Oscar winning role as Carol the waitress in "As Good As It Gets"; after all the movie was nominated for seven Academy Awards, two of which (best male and female actors) it won, not to mention countless other awards. In "Then She Found Me", her April Epner character much reminded me of Carol the waitress. Here she plays a school teacher going through a much more trying period of her life than Carol did, and even more than that of her character Jeannie in the 2010 movie "Every Day", a film I raved about in an earlier review this year. She also directed "Then She Found Me" with a cast I'm sure she appreciated, which included Bette Midler, Colin Firth and Matthew Broderick. I did not know that Salman Rushdie did any acting, yet to my surprise, he did okay as Hunt's gynaecologist. Colin Firth's character Frank played Hunt's love interest; that couple was as unlikely as the Nicholson-Hunt match. Frank is a neurotic father of two young children and estranged from his wife who left him for a life a debauchery which of course was the source of his barely manageable neurosis. That love interest is volatile and passionate. Oh, what a delight to watch it was to me. I took a liking to Shawn Colvin's music in this movie.
Played by first-time director Helen Hunt, April is a 39-year-old elementary school teacher in Brooklyn whose biological clock has been ticking so loudly it's been keeping her up at night. But that's just the beginning of her woes. Her husband of just a few months (Matthew Broderick) has left her; her adoptive mother has just died; and a crazy lady (Bette Midler) - a local TV talk show host - is claiming to be her biological mother (with Steve McQueen as her father, no less). Then, just as her midlife crisis is coming to a boil, in steps a conveniently abandoned father of two (Colin Firth) - one of whom is April's pupil - to sweep her off her feet, though he comes with his own share of problems as well.Though "Then She Found Me" is not quite as shopworn and trite as that synopsis may make it sound, it's still an uneasy mixture of insightful drama and plot-tweaking contrivance. In fact, the Alice Arlen/Victor Levin/Helen Hunt screenplay, based on the 1990 novel by Elinor Lipman, tries so hard to be unconventional that it often winds up feeling fake. On the positive side, though, the acting is good (why have we seen so little of Hunt on screen since she won her Oscar fourteen years ago?); the characters skew a little older than your typical romantic comedy figures; the story ends on a tremendously sweet note, and there's just enough genuine humor and charm in the movie to make it worth a look-see.One side note: the movie makes a continuity error by claiming that April was conceived in 1966 when McQueen was off in China filming "The Sand Pebbles," but later we're told she was conceived when her mother was at a drive-in showing of "Bullitt," which wasn't even released until 1968!