Reviews

Then She Found Me

Overplotted pregnancy flick

By GERALD PEARY | April 30, 2008

1.5 Stars

Then She Found Me

Helen Hunt bites off more than she can chomp on, choosing also to star in this her first try as a film director, a clumsy, overplotted rendition of Elinor Lipman’s 1990 novel. Hunt’s April is a New York schoolteacher who, approaching her 40th birthday, is determined to get pregnant — she won’t adopt a child because she herself was adopted. Unruly stories tumble together: April’s husband (Matthew Broderick) runs off; her adoptive mother dies; April meets an aggressive, abrasive lady claiming to be her real mom (an awkwardly directed Bette Midler); she finds a potential new boyfriend (a ditsy Colin Firth); she discovers she’s pregnant. Hunt doesn’t have the filmmaking acumen to weave these disparate stories, and there’s more: an unconvincing Jewish angle. Plus novelist Salman Rushdie, recruited to play a lovable obstetrician.

Related: Review: Soul Surfer, Rushdie’s courage, Fall Books Preview: Getting booked, More

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