At the Movies: Then She Found Me
I have serious issues with the term Chick Flick. It's become a put-down for light entertainment pitched to entertain women. As soon as some viewer/critic brands any film a Chick Flick, males roll their eyes, book a night at home with the Xbox or the cricket, and intelligent women seek more meaningful distractions.
That instantly cuts the potential audience, and means some excruciating drivel is rightfully avoided. It also means that worthier movies lumped in with the rest may never get a fair suck of the sav.
Then She Found Me has, sadly, picked up the Chick Flick label like a Persian rug picks up mongrel dog hair. It's a shame. I enjoyed it so much I temporarily forgot I was there to review it, and my male test subject (who would have picked the XBox option if I'd said "Chick Flick" or "Romantic couch scene with Colin Firth") had a thoroughly good night out, and so did the bloke sitting behind us.
Helen Hunt (Mad About You, What Women Want) has always been a strong, interesting presence. In this low-budget, FX-free film-which she co-wrote, co-produced, directed and stars in-she opens the whole Pandora's box of being mothered, motherhood and its associated relationships in unexpected ways, without glamour, with humour, and with big blobs of honesty.
She also does it with intelligence, plus she gets to have a relationship with Colin Firth in perhaps his most romantically satisfying appearance since Pride And Prejudice - because he's keeping it real in a strong, warts-and-all role without farce or a stiff upper lip. Even the movie's colourful dishonesty (delivered with bright and bubbly extroversion by Bette Midler as Hunt's birth mother) is called on to own up. The complete cast (spot the famous author) does a very fine job.
The gaunt, 45-year-old Hunt plays the interesting but curiously unglamorous female lead-the restrained, childless schoolteacher April, married to the child-like Ben (Matthew Broderick). Her life turns inside out in the course of a few short days, and we get to see how a couple of responsible adults (and a couple of not-very-responsible ones) deal with the complexities that follow, and how April finds children and happiness in her world. It's American, it's urban, and it's a little chaotic, but there's plenty of universal stuff we can relate to. It worked for me-but then Hunt and I were born just 29 days apart and mothering issues have occupied my life.
Hunt's "vanity project" isn't perfect nor everyone's cup of tea. It's unendurable, American, middle-aged whinging according to Mail Online's Christopher Tookey, but I say take a chill pill...or go back to your gaming console.
It's also referred to as a romantic comedy, but it's not really. Hunt's character is serious and brittle, and there's too much thinking in it for that label, but that's no bad thing in my book. That's why it doesn't deserve the dreaded Chick Flick status-it's not completely mindless fluff from a B-grade cast, and it has wider appeal.
Bold, warm and touching, it unsettles, bustles, but entertains. It's a pretty satisfying night out.
Maria Polglase
THEN SHE FOUND ME (M) 1h 40m. Next screening at the Village Theatre, Wednesday 3 December, 8pm.
