Then She Found Me

• Title: THEN SHE FOUND ME
  
• Publisher: IMAGE ENT. / Genre: COMEDY / Theme: ROMANTIC COMEDY / Rating: R
• Product Type: VIDEO /
• Platform: DVD MOVIE

An all-star cast with memorable performances by Helen Hunt, Matthew Broderick, Bette Midler and Colin Firth powers this smart, funny drama about love and destiny. Desperate to start a family, schoolteacher April Epner (Hunt) is thrown into confusion when she is unexpectedly abandoned by her husband (Broderick). She gets another shock when she meets her unusual birth mother (Midler), a self-centered talk show host who's not exactly the ideal mom. At first she rejects her, along with the attentions of a divorced dad (Firth), but then she begins to find her life opening up in ways she had never imagined.Like all the most intriguing titles, Then She Found Me lends itself to multiple interpretations. Does "she" refe! r to New York talk-show host Bernice (Bette Midler, in a welcome return to the screen), the self-proclaimed birth parent who enters the life of schoolteacher April (Oscar winner Helen Hunt) upon the death of her adoptive mother? Or does the pronoun refer to April, who meets divorced dad Frank (Colin Firth) the day her marriage to co-worker Ben (Matthew Broderick) comes to an abrupt halt? The surprising conclusion to Hunt's directorial debut suggests a third interpretation. In adapting Elinor Lipman's novel, Hunt treads well-worn ground, but does so with grace and sensitivity. When Ben walks out on his 39-year-old wife, she fears he's left with her chances of having a baby. As much as she enjoyed her childhood, April would prefer not to adopt, and with the support of her non-adopted brother, Freddy (Ben Shenkman), she struggles to reconcile her warm feelings towards the awkward Frank with her chilly reaction to the slippery Bernice. Though April has a hard time imagining the! y could be related, the teacher and the TV personality both wa! nt child ren in their lives, so it's not as if they lack a common bond. When April finds out she's pregnant, further complications ensue. Though Then She Found Me circles Lifetime movie-of-the-week territory, Hunt resists the urge to smooth away her characters’ rough edges, investing her film with the crackle of real life. --Kathleen C. Fennessy