Then She Found Me (R)
Blue Rider Pictures; IMDb; Rotten Tomatoes; Wikipedia
streaming sites: none that I know of

First I should mention my choice to put this review under "drama." Some might call it comedy, or romance, and it certainly has some of both of those qualities. Some might even call it quirky. Personally, I didn't see quite enough of any of those things in the movie to motivate me to put my review in any of those categories. In fact, I didn't see enough humor to even put it under "seriocomedy." No, I think it is far too much a drama to call it anything else, really. I also want to say... I thought it was a good movie, but I didn't actually like it that much. I mean, I liked it a little... I thought it had a decent story, and the acting was pretty decent all around. Um... it's based on a book I've never read or even heard of, by Elinor Lipman, but the screenplay was written by Helen Hunt, along with a couple of other people I've never heard of. Hunt is also the star, and the movie is her directorial debut. I definitely think she did a good job in all her different functions. I hate not liking the movie, but it was just... kind of hard for me to watch.

Anyway, Hunt's character, April Epner, gets married to a guy named Ben Green (Matthew Broderick). And not long thereafter (at least I think it's not long; the timing is unclear), he decides to leave her. They both seem like basically good people who really love each other, but he's never really quite grown up, hasn't quite "found" himself. I think it's the day after he leaves her that her adoptive mother dies. (April has a younger brother named Freddy who was born to her adoptive parents sometime after they adopted her.) And um... April is 39, and feels a deep need to have a baby, but that appears not to be likely, now that Ben is out of her life. However... she's a schoolteacher, and there's a guy named Frank (Colin Firth) who has a son in her class, and a younger daughter in the same school. And his wife recently left him. And after awhile, April and Frank get involved and quickly develop strong feelings for each other, though they're both damaged because of their pasts, and April isn't completely over Ben. Things get further complicated by the fact that a local late-night talk show host named Bernice Graves (Bette Midler) has suddenly entered April's life, and announced that she is her birth mother. April doesn't trust her at first, and even once she does, it's pretty bad timing, and Bernice isn't exactly the easiest person for her to accept. Um... I guess most of the comedy in the movie comes from April's awkward new relationship with Bernice, but I'd still say there's more drama to it than comedy. And I guess that's all I want to say about the plot. I could try to convey more of my impressions of the film, but... eh, I don't feel like it.