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Capsule review: ‘Then She Found Me’
Helen Hunt’s feature directing debut (she also stars) lets her share a grown-up woman’s perspective on a dilemma (inconvenient pregnancy) and an archetype (the emotionally inept man-child) that have seen plenty of play in recent comedies. Hunt, refreshingly, steers almost entirely clear of cheap yuks and is unwilling to use the challenges her protagonists face as simple plot points: Here, when a character is a single parent, a kid’s existence actually affects the decisions he makes. The “he” in question is Colin Firth, who, like Hunt’s character, has recently been divorced; the two gravitate toward each other, naturally, and Firth’s diffidence in the face of new love plays out beautifully. Anything but diffident is Bette Midler, a self-obsessed talk show host who arrives out of the blue to claim she’s Hunt’s real mother — and to inject some restrained kookiness into the tale’s maturely handled midlife crises.
6:30 p.m. Saturday at the Paramount Theatre
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