Movie Log: Then She Found Me

As I try to catch back up on the movies I've seen recently, I find I remember some of them better than others. Then She Found Me, for example, is mostly a blur.

It's directed by Helen Hunt from a script she co-wrote based on an Elinor Lipman novel, and Hunt also stars (looking thin, wan, and old -- not what you'd expect a director to do for herself) as a NYC schoolteacher whose new husband (Matthew Broderick) turns out to be an sadly overgrown boy who runs away from her.

The newly divorced father of one of her students -- Colin Firth -- is interested in her, so the two of them dance around the fact that it's really much too soon for both of them, and they both know that.

And then Bette Midler sashays in, as Hunt's long-lost birthmother, who is also a very Midleresque local talk-show host.

Oh, and it's all wrapped up in Hunt's desire both to have a child -- which has to be hers biologically -- and to know what its like to be a "real" biological child, not adopted. (Since she is consumed by the fact that she herself was adopted and always has thought her brother, the "real" son, had it all better.)

There's too much plot for one movie here; it shows all the signs of being adapted from a novel by someone who loved that novel too much, and couldn't bear to get rid of any of the best parts. Then She Found Me would have been better served jettisoning some of the ungainly bits and streamlining itself. It's a pleasant movie with solid performances, but it feels like the highlights reel of a film that's several hours longer.

Oddly, I've now seen Colin Firth in a romantic comedy about schoolteachers (this and Fever Pitch) twice in a few months. Seems an odd niche.

If you like the performers, you'll enjoy Then She Found Me. And if you don't expect too much, you won't be disappointed -- it's a good movie, but not much more than that.