Then we were all drama queens

Helen Hunt has put together a good cast for her debut as a director in this romcom in which she also stars. Alas, the screenplay by Alice Arlen and Victor Levin tries too hard and winds up with chopped liver. In its opening sequence, a schoolteacher named April Epner (Hunt) gets married to a colleague named Ben (Mathew Broderick, in klutzy mode) in a Jewish wedding with all the trappings. On screen the marriage hardly lasts as long as the ceremony. Before you know it, Ben's moving back with his mother, April's adoptive mother (Lynn Cohen) dies, and April meets a handsome Brit called Frank (Colin Firth) with an absentee wife and two young children, who're at her school. That's sufficient to put April in a tizzy but isn't enough to satisfy Arlen and Levin. Their compulsion to jazz things up leads them to introduce Bette Midler, as famous talk show hostess Bernice Graves, who declares herself to be the 39-year-old April's birth mother--and precedes to tell several serious lies. This is quickly followed by April's surprise pregnancy, which turns out to be due to Ben. And was something she has fervently declared she wants: the old "biological clock" thing.

Everybody in this story is a drama queen regardless of sex but Ms. Midler is the queen of the queens. Bette is, well, Bette, besides which her character as written is narcissistic and over-the-top intrusive. She has no restraint or tact and loses all credibility with April and, incidentally, with the audience. This subplot only brings out how unconvincing all these characters are. For all we know, every one of them may be lying to April with Bette just the one who gets busted. But she's the worst: all she has going for her is that smile, which is more like a smirk. Only if you're a hard core Midler fan will you tolerate this character and like this movie.

April is suspicious and stressed out. Understandable feelings in the context, certainly; but still, she's surprisingly mean to Bernice, given that the minute a DNA test confirms their relationship she's confiding in her about Frank and Ben and everything else. When Bernice is shampooing the newly pregnant April in a bath tub Bette drops the smirk from her face and the chirp from her voice and you wonder if it's the same person--or the right reel. At the screening I saw, it wasn't. But when the missing one was shown, the transition still didn't make sense.

Ben (a decidedly unattractive Broderick) is the passive sort of drama queen, the kind that just can't cope--or decide anything. Frank declares that he's perfect, and he and April, after one or two dates at most, declare undying love, but he has a major shouting hissy fit after April has a moment of almost-sex with Ben, feelings for Ben having been stirred up understandably, sort of, by the sense that he is at least the sperm donor. Both Frank and Ben show up for an ultrasound performed, believe it or not, by Salmon Rushdie. (Perhaps they wanted to meet the author of The Satanic Verses). I wondered how Firth felt delivering some of his lines. His air of composure sits ill with the out of control things Frank is given to say from his first appearance on screen.

It's hard to say what all this is about (besides a degeneration of the style of Nora Ephron). Confusion, certainly. Helen Hunt is a beautiful woman, as Colin Firth tells her, but she looks strained and worried all the time. Is this a comedy or a nervous breakdown? She also looks older than 39, and she is: the actress is actually 45. Matthew Broderick has moments when he seems the best actor of the lot, probably because his Ben is the only character who is not overdrawn. But Ben too is forced to telegraph his emotions verbally. This is simply a screenplay that doesn't trust itself--or the actors--for anything; nor are they allowed to trust each other. Bette Midler, like Colin Firth, has an aria or two. She has to practically scream to get through to the resistant Helen Hunt. Everybody talks too loud and too fast.

Since the issue of birth mothers is brought up, it's hard not to think of David O. Russell's hilarious Flirting with Disaster--and to find this version wanting. As for the breakup/meet cute/breakup sex/rebound theme, it's weakened by Broderick's paucity of lines (even though that does allow him to seem momentarily a person and not just pages from a script). Even more, it's interrupted by the birth-mother theme, which has no redeeming features. As a result no theme is well developed, and it's hard to separate what is funny from what is simply embarrassing. Flirting with Disaster works so well partly because it's a road movie, and each change of venue feels significant and fresh and funny in new ways. Then She Found Me doesn't go anywhere with its colorless locations that drift uninterestingly from school to restaurant to doctor's office--they just provide sitcom backgrounds for sitcom actions.

This is a glossy Hollywood product with name actors nonetheless, and it delves into themes fans of romantic comedy tend to like, so people will like it. Hunt, Midler, Firth, and Broderick perform their sometimes far-fetched speeches with a good deal of conviction. Hunt particularly gives her all,and is very present for her lines. One could imagine this character in a movie about something real. Firth is suave without seeming slick; he'd be good in a better light comedy, and he's been in a couple, such as The Importance of Being Earnest and Love, Actually. Midler is fun to watch, but seeing her here only reminds one of better (or at least funnier) things she's done like Down and Out in Beverly Hills and Beaches. Then She Found Me fails because of its writing, which doesn't recall anything you wouldn't have gladly forgotten.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.