DVDs From the Library-Then She Found Me

DVDs From the Library

In the library there is a bin full of DVDs. One may take up to five and keep them for a week. Don’t forget to return them on time or you will pay a hefty over-due penalty, or worse, they will develop a terminal mold and eat your furniture, flooring and, eventually, your brain. Join me now as I take a look at one…

“Then She Found Me”
Staring- Matthew Broderick, Colin Firth, Helen Hunt, and Bette Midler

Looks good! You say to yourself as you pluck this one out of the bin. A good romantic comedy is what it looks like and in my house that is usually a winner. Unfortunately, after ten minutes into it I found my estrogen level had risen to a lethal level and my balls were beginning to fall off. If I had read the packaging closely I would have seen that this movie was brought to us by “killer films” (small k small f) and it was a killer in the most negative way possible. Also, and, more importantly, Helen Hunt’s name and photo were peppered throughout the credits (I didn’t really count) at least two hundred times. She played the lead, wrote the screenplay (she gave herself two credits for that!), directed and produced, conceivably did the camera work and catered the shoot. Helen Hunt is a passable journeywoman in the acting trade and by surrounding herself with a troupe of very established actors whose reputations are head and shoulders above hers in everyway one would expect a good film-NOT! This is a perfect example of a film reduced to its least common denominator.

Her husband in the film (Matthew Broderick) is a wishy-washy pussy who is obviously not happy with the marriage. It is not clear why, nor does the watcher particularly care. There are a couple of sex scenes which accounts for the ‘R’ rating but seem to do their best not to titillate nor make one crave either of the perpetrators. One, in the car on a city street, is not believable at all and left me wishing I was blind. I have seen Matthew Broderick do great things in a number of films but in this one the best thing he did was make enough money to make a couple of month’s boat payments.

Collin Firth is in every new film produced in Hollywood-Have you noticed? He is not really very good in any of them and in this one he is over-the-top mediocre. Playing H.H.’s newly found boyfriend, one sees no real reason for the attraction, feels no magnetism, and flinches every time he opens his mouth. For some reason she feels the need to have him and he, her, but at a party, I would avoid both of them at all costs. I do like his choice of clothing. I think he just wore whatever he came to the set in that day and he has a nice personal wardrobe.

Bette Midler is the only (slightly) shining star in this black hole of a story. She is an amazing actress/person and it will take more than a bad play, crappy input from her costars and lousy direction to kill her performance. But it came close. She has great delivery and presence. She plays the mother who gave H.H. up for adoption as a baby and has decided to make contact with her adult off-spring (god knows why!) and wants a relationship. Well, let me say that H.H. has aged horribly and appears to be older than her mom. Bette has a better body, preserved face, and would be a hell of a lot more fun in bed (I’m betting). The lines that are lobbed at her by this hyper herd of coconspirators are returned with Miss M’s typical homerun attitude (for the most part-given the dreck quality of the writing, she does what she can!) and I love her for the college try.

Allow me to quote the packaging as I sum up this film-“Smart, engaging, and funny”? Nope. Dumb, uninteresting and pathetic. I give this film my “DVD from the Library” rating of---
Six Smelly Socks.