Then she found it, a script she wanted to direct. So now she's Helen Hunt,hyphenate.
That's the new identity of Oscar-winning actress Hunt (As Good As It Gets) because she's the director-co-writer-producer-star of Then She Found Me, an engrossing dramedy based on the 1990 novel by Elinor Lipman, which Hunt adapted with co-scripters Alice Arlen and Victor Levin into a movie mix of light laughs and heavy heartaches.
No vanity project, this. Because director Hunt -- whose previous directorial experience consisted of four episodes of her TV sitcom Mad About You -- does her leading lady (herself) no cosmetic favors in the way she shoots her, which is anything but flattering.
And while director Hunt isn't making it easy for actress Hunt, the latter returns the disfavor by overplaying her character's moroseness and earnestness. Not that she's not effective and convincing in the role -- this is, after all, a highly skilled performer, to say the least. It's just that we'd have a bit more fun if she did as well.
Hunt portrays a Job-like 39-year-old New York schoolteacher whose hopes of having a child would appear to go out the window when her fairly new husband, played by Matthew Broderick, walks out the door.
Then her adoptive mother passes away, and she strikes up an acquaintance with the interested single dad of one of her students, played by Colin Firth, whom she accuses of coming on to her inappropriately soon after her hubby splits.
Yes, things go badly.
Next, she's contacted out of the blue by an exuberant, self-absorbed local-TV-show host, played by Bette Midler, who claims to be her birth mother. And yes, now things go from bad to worse.
So April must confront her feeling of maternal abandonment even as she seeks to become a mother herself.
You can tell from that short description that this is one comedy-drama that gets very serious and very dark: it's an amazingly sad film to eventuate out of a seemingly comic premise.
Hunt seems to be quite emotionally invested in the project and its themes, and perhaps she tries to hang a few too many subplots on the film's spine. Maybe that's why there are a few embarrassingly false notes, notably one clunker of a Hunt-Broderick backseat rendezvous. Still, there are unmistakably touching grace notes as well.
So the film is, alas, uneven. But it's likable nonetheless, with credible acting all around, especially from Midler, who does wonders with a character who might have been a gross caricature in lesser hands, but who instead becomes a sympathetic and touching satellite supporter. Firth is also fine.
So we'll adopt 2½ stars out of 4 for the problematic but promising directing debut of Helen Hunt. Then She Found Me, a respectable seriocomedy with charm and wit, is a rainy-sunny-rainy-sunny forecast of bright things to come if Helen stays in the directorial hunt.
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KYW movie critic Bill Wine gives his thoughts on the movies "I Love You, Beth Cooper", "Bruno" and "The Hurt Locker". (3:02)
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Then her adoptive mother passes away, and she strikes up an acquaintance with the interested single dad of one of her students, played by Colin Firth, whom she accuses of coming on to her inappropriately soon after her hubby splits.
