Product Description

An all-star cast with memorable performances by Helen Hunt, Matthew Broderick, Bette Midler and Colin Firth powers this smart, funny drama about love and destiny. Desperate to start a family, schoolteacher April Epner (Hunt) is thrown into confusion when she is unexpectedly abandoned by her husband (Broderick). She gets another shock when she meets her unusual birth mother (Midler), a self-centered talk show host who's not exactly the ideal mom. At first she rejects her, along with the attentions of a divorced dad (Firth), but then she begins to find her life opening up in ways she had never imagined.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15856 in DVD
• Brand: Image Entertainment
• Released on: 2008-09-02
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• ESRB Rating: Teen
• Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 100 minutes

Features

• An all-star cast with memorable performances by Helen Hunt, Matthew Broderick, Bette Midler and Colin Firth powers this smart, funny drama about love and destiny. Desperate to start a family, schoolteacher April Epner (Hunt) is thrown into confusion when she is unexpectedly abandoned by her husband (Broderick). She gets another shock when she meets her unusual birth mother (Midler), a self-centere

Amazon.com
Like all the most intriguing titles, Then She Found Me lends itself to multiple interpretations. Does "she" refer to New York talk-show host Bernice (Bette Midler, in a welcome return to the screen), the self-proclaimed birth parent who enters the life of schoolteacher April (Oscar winner Helen Hunt) upon the death of her adoptive mother? Or does the pronoun refer to April, who meets divorced dad Frank (Colin Firth) the day her marriage to co-worker Ben (Matthew Broderick) comes to an abrupt halt? The surprising conclusion to Hunt's directorial debut suggests a third interpretation. In adapting Elinor Lipman's novel, Hunt treads well-worn ground, but does so with grace and sensitivity. When Ben walks out on his 39-year-old wife, she fears he's left with her chances of having a baby. As much as she enjoyed her childhood, April would prefer not to adopt, and with the support of her non-adopted brother, Freddy (Ben Shenkman), she struggles to reconcile her warm feelings towards the awkward Frank with her chilly reaction to the slippery Bernice. Though April has a hard time imagining they could be related, the teacher and the TV personality both want children in their lives, so it's not as if they lack a common bond. When April finds out she's pregnant, further complications ensue. Though Then She Found Me circles Lifetime movie-of-the-week territory, Hunt resists the urge to smooth away her characters’ rough edges, investing her film with the crackle of real life. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Customer Reviews

Another Biological Clock Ticks...But Hunt Provides Heart and Conviction to Her Directorial Debut
Released earlier this year, Baby Mama covers the same emotional territory but in much broader slapstick terms, while this 2008 serio-comedy is driven far more by character than situation. In this case, the protagonist is 39-year-old April Epner, a New York kindergarten teacher who was raised in a close-knit Jewish family and desperately wants the biological connection of a birth child before her alarm clock goes off. She marries fellow teacher Ben, an inarticulate schlub with a terminal case of the Peter Pan Syndrome. After a brief time, he wants out of the marriage, and at almost the same time, April's adoptive mother Trudy dies. Not even a month goes by before April's biological mother suddenly shows up in the form of the brazenly overbearing but genuinely likeable Bernice Graves, a cable talk-show hostess who is something of a local media celebrity. If life was not complicated enough, April also finds herself drawn to Frank, the single father of one of her pupils. Unlike Ben, he feels the same about April but is fighting his own bitterness about his own recent divorce.

Not only does Helen Hunt star as April, but she also co-wrote the screenplay with Alice Arlen and Victor Levin and makes her big-screen directorial debut. Granted she's more impressive as an actress than a filmmaker, but as a director and writer, she makes the most of a storyline that stacks the deck a bit like a Lifetime TV-movie. There are enough realistic surprises that take the plot off the rails in a good way. Looking gaunt and avoiding much make-up, Hunt is really playing a variation of the beaten-down waitress she played in As Good As It Gets, as she carries that same constantly pained expression of disappointment and looks about to explode during moments of emotional duress. However, a decade later, Hunt inhabits the character more naturalistically this time and with a deeper sense of vulnerability and haggard exhaustion. Perhaps to minimize any unnecessary dramatic risk, Hunt cast the other principal roles with actors playing familiar parts. Matthew Broderick effectively portrays Ben as the perpetually dazed man-child he is, while perennial love interest Colin Firth gives texture to the seemingly ideal suitor Frank, especially as he edges toward the breaking point in tolerating the sum of April's foibles.

In one of her increasingly rare screen appearances, Bette Midler gives a scene-stealing performance as Bernice. She lights up the movie with the character's unfettered sense of abandonment while gradually exposing the secrets that threaten to undermine her newly found relationship with her daughter. Other parts are played with minimum fuss - Ben Shenkman as April's physician brother Freddy feeling put-upon for having a biological tie to their mother, and Salman Rushdie (yes, the controversial author of The Satanic Verses which brought him a death sentence from the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989) as April's doctor. Hunt provides the principal actors, especially herself, plenty of good, meaty scenes with opportunities for bravura moments, and they do deliver. It just doesn't quite come together as a whole by the end, and that may be that Hunt is so used to the sitcom format of the long-running series, Mad About You. The incomplete result is that some laughs feel a bit contrived, some scene transitions seem jarring, and some expected character revelations are given short shrift. Nonetheless, the dramatic developments toward the end carry the emotional impact necessary to make the movie truly affecting, and Hunt should be given full credit for a most auspicious debut as a filmmaker.

Bravo Helen Hunt
This was an impressive movie. Independent, yes. Full of surprises, yes. Helen Hunt directed the movie as well as starred in it. I have always admired her as an actress ever since as good as it gets with jack nicholson. This is a movie about a woman getting older that wants a child. She gets married in the beginning, and then her husband decides he isnt ready for the pressure. He knows she wants a baby, but he isnt sure he is ready for the responsibility.

Depressed and alone, she finds solace in a divorced father of two who is semi-angry, semi-depressed, and in a way, ready to move on. She ignores his advances at first, but finally realizes it is time to move on from the husband she believed to be the one.

I love Colin Firth in this movie, he has an excellent display of passion and anger at each event that happens to him. He seems to be a mate of challenge for our heroine, but at the same time the potential for a better future.

Bette Midler was also equally superb. She played the crazy, sometimes destructive liar pretty well. She is very self centered, and changes the subject frequently, but you cannot help but resist her.

Excellent from all angles, a must see. It is too bad it was dubbed an independent piece, as not everyone knows about it. We have an independent theater that just shows these types of films. I will be buying it, but it is definitly worth a watch over and over again.

Quiet movie with awesome acting
I found this movie at my local library and when I saw the great cast I thought I'd give it a try. I was pleasantly surprised. It is a quiet movie about characters but the plot had some surprising twists that were very realistic. The acting was the great part. Everyone (Helen Hunt, Matthew Broderick, Colin Firth, Bette Midler, Alan Shenkmen)were extraordinary. I really give Bette Midler kudos for not being over the top. She was spot on with her character and a breath of fresh air to watch. I recommend this movie.