Film

Then She Found Me

Cert: 15

Description: With her 40th birthday fast approaching and her biological clock ticking louder then ever, New York schoolteacher April Epner is desperate to begin her own brood with husband Ben. Out of the blue, Ben sits April down and confesses, "I don't want this life," sending his wife into an emotional tailspin. Frank, the divorced British father of one of her students, advises her to keep a cool head and, "Don't do anything until you've slept," which is easier said than done. The death of her adoptive mother threatens to tip April over the edge, then brassy talk show host Bernice drops a further bombshell: she is her real mother.

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Dir: Helen Hunt.

Cast: Helen Hunt, Colin Firth, Bette Midler, Matthew Broderick

Country: US.

Year: 2007.

Duration: 100mins

Love lessons in Then She Found Me

Colin Firth to the rescue: single-dad Frank falls for April (Helen Hunt)

By Derek Malcolm
18 Sep 2008

Schoolteacher April (Helen Hunt) has separated from her husband (a rather porky Matthew Broderick) and mourns the death of her adopted mother. But her real troubles begin when Bette Midler appears as a talk show host who claims to be her real mum and says that a one-night stand with Steve McQueen was responsible.

Gradually, April begins to believe her and, just as she�s getting over the strange facts of her birth, she falls for Frank, the single-dad parent of one of her pupils. Since he�s played by Colin Firth, you know that things will sort themselves out in the end.

Hunt, who wrote and directed as well as acting the lead, makes all her characters a bit crazy and it�s not easy to square the twists and turns of the plot with reality: the screenplay seems implausible even if the relationships are not.

Everyone acts decently and you have to praise Hunt for her tenacity. But this suffers from some fairly dire cinematography and a manufactured air that prevents the watcher connecting to the whole thing.