THEN SHE FOUND ME - indigestible

THEN SHE FOUND ME is a very busy film - jampacked with tragic, dramatic events that somewhat overload what had the makings of an interesting, emotionally engaging adult drama. First-time director, and lead actress, Helen Hunt, handles all the material without missing a beat, but the resulting film is indigestable. The movie focuses on a mousy, middle-aged primary-school teacher called April, played by a suitably dowdy-looking Hunt. Within a week, her husband Matthew Broderick) leaves her, her adoptive mother dies, she meets a really lovely bloke (Colin Firth), but finds out she's actually pregnant with her ex-husband's child. And, by the way, her biological mother (Bette Midler), a talk-show host, turns up with lots of tall tales about how she gave April up. The impact of all this on the key players unfolds over the next hour, finishing up with a rather trite repetition of a proverb that was told at the start of the film. As well as the overly-dramatic plot, THEN SHE FOUND ME also contains some of the corniest dialogue this side of Mills and Boon and I pity Coln Firth having to play the stock bumbling, inarticulate Brit. 

THEN SHE FOUND ME played Toronto 2007 and opened earlier this year in the USA, Israel, Australia, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Portugal and Poland. It is currently on release in the UK and opens in France on October 1st and in Argentina on November 13th. THEN SHE FOUND ME is available on Region 1 DVD.