Then She Found Me (2007)

Director:

Helen Hunt

Writers:

Alice Arlen (screenplay) and
Victor Levin (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

1 May 2008 (Israel)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama | Romance

Tagline:

Life can change in a heartbeat.

Plot:

A New York schoolteacher hits a midlife crisis when, in quick succession, her husband leaves, her adoptive mother dies and her biological mother...

Plot Keywords:

Talk Show Host | Birth Mother | Unhappy Marriage | Syringe | Biological Clock

Awards:

2 wins

Cast

Helen Hunt	...	April Epner
Bette Midler	...	Bernice Graves
Colin Firth	...	Frank
Matthew Broderick	...	Ben Green
Ben Shenkman	...	Dr. Freddy Epner
Lynn Cohen	...	Trudy Epner
John Benjamin Hickey	...	Alan
Salman Rushdie	...	Dr. Masani
Daisy Tahan	...	Ruby
Tommy Nelson	...	Jimmy Ray
Stephanie Yankwitt	...	Stacey
Lillias White	...	Sheila (as Lillias D. White)
David Callegati	...	Gianni
Rabbi Kenneth Stern	...	Rabbi (as Rabbi Kenneth A. Stern)
Robert LuPone	...	Ted

MPAA:

Rated R for language and some sexual content.

Runtime:

100 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Hebrew

Colour:

Colour

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

USA:R | Australia:M | Canada:14A (Alberta/Manitoba/Ontario) | Canada:G (Québec) | Canada:PG (British Columbia) | UK:15 | Finland:K-7 | Netherlands:AL | Ireland:15A | Singapore:PG (cut) | New Zealand:M | Argentina:13 | Mexico:B

Filming Locations:

Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA

Company:

Black Watch Productions

Trivia:

ThinkFilm and Canadian distributor TVA Films bought the U.S. and Canadian rights, respectively, for the film at the 2007 Toronto Internation Film Festival.

Goofs:

Factual errors: The ultra sound picture at 6 weeks is not developmentally correct. At 6 weeks, you would be unable to distinguish the baby's features (hands, spine, etc). The baby would look more like a bean in shape.

Quotes:

April Epner: I know what I did to you, to you in particular. Kinda worst nightmare kind of thing, right? I knew that. Even at the time I knew that.
Frank: What else?
April Epner: I'll do it again, I will, I'll hurt you again and again. Not like that, you'd have to leave me if I hurt you like that. If we were together you would leave me if I hurt you like that again, wouldn't you?
Frank: Yes. Yes, I would.
April Epner: Good. But I'll hurt you in other ways, little ways, I won't mean to but I will. And sometimes I will mean to.
Frank: This is quite an offer you've worked out.
April Epner: You'll hurt me too, you know. You'll hurt me and change on me, you might even leave me after you promise you won't, how about that?
Frank: I wouldn't.
April Epner: But you might.
Frank: But I wouldn't.
[...]

Movie Connections:

Featured in "Siskel & Ebert & the Movies: (2008-05-03)" (2008)

Soundtrack:

I'll Say I'm Sorry Now

Wretched Script Cannot Be Redeemed by All Star Cast

"Then She Found Me" is a wretched movie, and it should not be. The talent here is undeniable: Helen Hunt, Colin Firth, Matthew Broderick, Bette Midler. The problem? An unforgivably awful script. Can anyone in Hollywood read? Hollywood is a world capital of entertainment, of magic; there is so much talent there. And yet, year after year, these awful scripts are greenlighted and talented writers starve. What gives?

The main character, April Epner (Helen Hunt) is never fleshed out. What we do know about her makes her incredibly unappealing. She's obsessed with her plump, middle-aged, boy-man husband (Broderick) who has left her to live in his mother's house. April is shrill and rude to her dying mother. She's manipulative and callow in her interactions with Colin Firth, the man all sensible women love and would treat like the treasure he is. In a particularly painful scene, Frank (Firth) makes a poignant confession of love to April, and she blows him off in order to gripe to her husband in a cell phone call. I was literally shouting at the screen, "Run, Colin, run! Get away from this nasty loser female as fast as ever you can!" It doesn't stop there. April attempts to have a quickie with her husband in the back seat of a car. On a busy city street. In broad daylight. With the car door open. It was such an ugly, gratuitous scene. It marked April as someone suffering from borderline personality disorder. But it doesn't stop there. April casually invites both her husband and her boyfriend to her gynecologist's office for an exam, in stirrups and johnny coat, to ascertain that she is pregnant, by her husband. WHY should we care about this woman? Why should Colin Firth be attracted to her? What inspired his poignant love confession? Nothing. There is nothing on screen, nothing in the script, that ever fleshes his attraction out.

Speaking of "flesh" … if you read comments here or on the web, you can see that most viewers were fixated on how haggard Helen Hunt looks. She is very thin, and time has not been kind to her face. In some scenes, it is impossible to look at her and not want to sit her down and get some food into her, she looks that much like a refugee from some catastrophe. Some viewers applauded Hunt for being "brave" and allowing the camera access, but focusing on Helen Hunt's courage utterly detracts from ever registering April Epner as a flesh and blood human being. You're not thinking about April Epner, you're thinking, "Hmm…how could Helen Hunt change her look?" Similarly, Bette Midler is never convincing as the character she is playing. She is always Bette Midler, bodacious saloon singer, breezing through a film with a script that is decidedly unworthy of any attempt on her part to bother to pretend to be anyone but Bette Midler.

Failed films like this are so painful because there are so few movies made for women over forty. The glory days that could produce a script like Mankiewicz's "All About Eve" are long behind us. Drek like this make us miss classics like that all the more. Older women do lead interesting lives. There are so many real questions that this film could have explored for a forty-plus schoolteacher whose husband wants to leave her. This film ignored all of those real questions and just plopped Colin Firth, the perfect man, and Bette Midler, STAR, in as phony, bogus attempts to stir up some kind of a plot. Sorry – without writing talent and insight, which this script utterly lacks – even starpower like Firth's and Middler's can't create a worthy film.