Then She Found Me.

"Then She Found Me, a serious comedy, is more impressive for what it refuses to do than for its modest accomplishment," writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times. "The directorial debut of Helen Hunt, who plays April Epner, an anxious 39-year-old kindergarten teacher in New York City, it has all the ingredients of a slick, commercial farce, which it emphatically is not."

"A movie about a woman in her late 30s who is desperate to have a baby is a hard sell in the male teen-oriented movie environment of today, or so the story goes in nearly every mainstream media outlet, including this one," notes the Los Angeles Times' Carina Chocano. "[D]efying all laws of probability and presumed palatability, this week offers up two such movies - one a bright, broad comedy starring Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, and another a narrower, flintier movie starring Helen Hunt and Bette Midler. Despite the appearance of Midler, Then She Found Me treats the subject more dramatically, likening the desire to have a child to hunger, thirst or the urge to relieve oneself - all three longings that will make anyone cranky, Hunt especially. The problem isn't so much the character of April as it is the way Hunt plays her - a little too whiny, a little too angry to be very sympathetic."

Updated through 4/28.

"Hunt and Midler are both underrated actresses, and though their conviction is obvious, their characters' propensity to blather is neither unique nor justified, simply psychotic - a transparent attempt on the filmmakers' parts to make this melodrama about motherhood and surrogacy seem less conventional and unspectacular than it really is," writes Ed Gonzalez in Slant.

"It's a romantic comedy, it's a mother-daughter drama, and most importantly, it's an unpretentious, gentle, moving film," writes Marcy Dermansky.

"Hunt directs like she acts - straightforward and without humor, even when she's meant to be funny," writes Robert Wilonsky in the Voice.

"The anxieties and angst of middle-class, middle-aged women remain rich, underexplored cinematic territory, but Hunt's instantly forgettable film does little to make this deep vein of cultural experience seem vital or exciting," writes Nathan Rabin at the AV Club.

"The story of a lonely woman confronted with the betrayal of her husband, her mother, and her God, Then She Found Me flirts with cinematic cliché but finds surprising rewards in its idiosyncratic story," writes Meghan Keane in the New York Sun.

Vulture Amy Preiser explains "How Helen Hunt Got Salman Rushdie to Give Her a Sonogram."

Lisa Rosen talks with Hunt for the Los Angeles Times.

Online listening tip. Michelle Norris talks with Hunt for NPR.

Update, 4/28: "What makes this small movie work is the filmmakers' curiosity about the many-sidedness of need - the way genuine benevolence, say, can be cloaked in blunt intrusiveness, or the way insults can be a reckless demand for love," writes David Denby in the New Yorker. "We get the feeling that these people are far from completed as personalities, and that the movie's end, when it comes, is more like a pause. With any luck, Helen Hunt will continue to put complicated people on the screen."

Posted by dwhudson at April 26, 2008 3:02 PM