Reel Thoughts: Mother Issues

Helen Hunt (who also co-wrote, produced and directed) stars in Then She Found Me as April, a New York schoolteacher who all at once loses her husband (he runs back to his mother) and adoptive mother, and is confronted by the birth mother she never knew she wanted to meet.

Bernice Graves (Bette Midler) is a loud, overbearing local talk show host who claims that Steve McQueen and she were April’s birth parents. April’s brother (Ben Shenkman from Angels in America) tells her to be careful, and she also finds herself in a lovely relationship with a pupil’s father (Colin Firth). To say all doesn’t go as planned is an understatement.

Hunt is very endearing and she guides her cast well through novelist Elinor Lipman’s comic but serious twists and turns. Midler is a welcome burst of energy as the woman who could either be April’s "fairy godmother or wicked witch". Matthew Broderick plays a variation of his slimy boss character in You Can Count on Me, which Then She Found Me resembles in tone. It’s a sweet and unassuming film with rich characters you’ll want to seek out and find.

UPDATE: Then She Found Me is now available on DVDfrom Amazon.com.

Review by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.