Film
What's on at the cinema plus reviews of the latest movie and DVD releases
Then She Found Me (2007)
Director: Helen Hunt
Movie review
From Time Out New York
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.
Author: David Fear
Time Out New York Issue 656: April 24 –30, 2008
Cast & crew
Director: Helen Hunt
Cast: Helen Hunt, Colin Firth, Matthew Broderick, Bette Midler, Lynn Cohen, Ben Shenkman, Salman Rushdie full cast
Duration: 100 mins
US Release: Apr 25 2008
Most popular on this site
Top Stories
A holiday guide to movie dystopias
‘Going anywhere nice this summer, sir?’ To celebrate the release of Pixar’s sublime post-apocalyptic robo-romance ‘Wall-E’, Time Out offers a tour guide of the best future worlds in film
Eddie Murphy's Crimes Against Cinema
We all remember the comic highs of 'Beverly Hills Cop' and 'Bowfinger', but Eddie Murphy has been in a fair few stinkers as well. Time Out to presents a handy rundown of his ten darkest cinematic hours...
Olly Blackburn meets Nic Roeg
Nic Roeg is the director of ‘Performance’, ‘Don’t Look Now’ and, most recently, ‘Puffball’. Olly Blackburn is the man behind ‘Donkey Punch’, a thriller about a holiday gone wrong. We sent Olly to meet his legendary colleague
The nine rules of ’80s fantasy
Unpack the VCR and fire up the soda stream as Time Out celebrates a golden age of Hollywood family filmmaking






What do you think?
Post your review now