|
|
 |
| |
Colin Firth arrives on the scene to boost Helen Hunt’s baby-making plans |
Hunt is found out by this bleak love story
THEN SHE FOUND ME
Directed by Helen Hunt
Certificate 15
SO much plot to squeeze in and under an hour-and-a-half to do it. You can almost taste the late-night editing suite rows as this Helen Hunt vehicle started off as a monumental, Hardy-esque epic and was then whittled down to a more populist romantic show.
Helen Hunt, who also directs, is April Epner, a 39-year-old teacher whose simple and straightforward life is turned upside down when the mother who gave her up for adoption as a baby appears.
She has recently been married to Ben (Matthew Broderick) and is aware that time is ticking (rather slowly if you are in a cinema with this on in front of you). She wants to get pregnant, and quick.
So far, so good. But when baby is not forthcoming, things get rather hairy in the life of poor April. Her adoptive mum points out she can adopt a baby herself if needs be. It’s an option April is keen on.
Her life gets more complicated when Ben, rather suddenly, decides the whole marriage thing has been a mistake. After wishing they hadn’t got hitched in the first place, April’s annus horriblis is completed when her mother dies.
But whaddya know, amid all this misery her real mum, played by Bette Midler in her usual blustering form, shows up.
Like an episode of Soap, that wonderful, 1980s US import screened in Channel 4’s early days, you’ll never guess what happens next. Except you will, of course.
And after Ben has disappeared the world’s worst leading man appears in the shape of Frank, played by Colin Firth. This should be a cue for you to take greater interest in your popcorn. I can only say in his defence that his performance here is a step up from the frankly unbearable job he did in this summer’s earlier release, Mamma Mia.
Firth needs to go out and roll around in the mud for a while – he has become trapped playing the same role over and over and over again, and, frankly, I am bored with his squeaky-clean renditions of the sort of men your mum wants you to bring home.
He is the all-too-available father of one of her pupils and there are a few more twists in terms of affairs of the heart that wobble to the surface before we’re allowed to head off home.
Then She Found Me is downbeat and, although it occasionally manages to be touching, it is all to often groan-inducing, and none of this is helped by the fact that Hunt’s character whips up little sympathy by her general cold-fish demeanour. |
 |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
