Film

An arranged marriage between a typical rom-com and what The New Yorker’s David Denby recently dubbed “the cinema of observation” (think Noah Baumbach, The Savages), Helen Hunt’s directorial debut wages war on two anatomical fronts: your pitter-pattering heart and her alter ego’s raw nerve endings. Hunt’s character, April, is a schoolteacher in full crisis mode, thanks to the departure of her husband (Broderick), the sudden appearance of her narcissistic long-lost mom (Midler) and the conspicuous lack of a bun in her 39-year-old oven. Naturally, this is also the exact moment that Mr. Right (Firth) shows up. (Firth’s single-father hunk is confirmed as “the one” when those tepid MOR tunes start playing over late-night phone chats.) Then the schizoid sensibility starts: Uncomfortable moments and near–nervous breakdowns transition into Oxygen-channel cuteness, which we’re supposed to read as some sort of approximation of…messy real life? Not quite.

At least this dramedy can’t be considered a vanity project, since the most distinguishing thing about Hunt’s movie is her total lack of vanity: She films herself in the least flattering way possible, albeit for maximum sympathy. Still, the movie’s aggressively middlebrow ideology is enough to make you utter the unspeakable: Come back, Nora Ephron. All is forgiven.