- DVD Details: Actors: Helen Hunt, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Wilkinson, Milena Vukotic, Stephen Campbell Moore
- Directors: Mike Barker
- Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC. Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only)
- Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1; Number of discs: 1; Studio: Lions Gate
- DVD Release Date: November 9, 1999; Run Time: 83 minutes
An all-star cast with memorable performances by Helen Hunt, Matthew Broderick, Bette Midler and Colin Firth powers this smart, funny drama about love and destiny. Desperate to start a family, schoolteacher April Epner (Hunt) is thrown into confusion when she is unexpectedly abandoned by her husband (Broderick). She gets another shock when she meets her unusual birth mother (Midler), a self-centered talk show host who's not exactly the ideal mom. At first she rejects her, along with the attentions of a divo! rced dad (Firth), but then she begins to find her life opening up in ways she had never imagined.Like all the most intriguing titles,
Then She Found Me lends itself to multiple interpretations. Does "she" refer to New York talk-show host Bernice (Bette Midler, in a welcome return to the screen), the self-proclaimed birth parent who enters the life of schoolteacher April (Oscar winner Helen Hunt) upon the death of her adoptive mother? Or does the pronoun refer to April, who meets divorced dad Frank (Colin Firth) the day her marriage to co-worker Ben (Matthew Broderick) comes to an abrupt halt? The surprising conclusion to Hunt's directorial debut suggests a third interpretation. In adapting Elinor Lipman's novel, Hunt treads well-worn ground, but does so with grace and sensitivity. When Ben walks out on his 39-year-old wife, she fears he's left with her chances of having a baby. As much as she enjoyed her childhood, April would prefer not to adopt, and with the suppor! t of her non-adopted brother, Freddy (Ben Shenkman), she strug! gles to reconcile her warm feelings towards the awkward Frank with her chilly reaction to the slippery Bernice. Though April has a hard time imagining they could be related, the teacher and the TV personality both want children in their lives, so it's not as if they lack a common bond. When April finds out she's pregnant, further complications ensue. Though
Then She Found Me circles Lifetime movie-of-the-week territory, Hunt resists the urge to smooth away her characters’ rough edges, investing her film with the crackle of real life.
--Kathleen C. FennessyGOOD WOMAN - DVD MovieScarlett Johannson and Helen Hunt give Oscar Wilde's popular play
Lady Windermere's Fan a lavish jazz-age treatment in
A Good Woman. An adventuress (Hunt,
As Good as It Gets) flees scandal in New York and lands in Italy, where she crosses paths with a young businessman (David Hasselhoff look-alike Mark Umbers) and his very upright young wife (Johansson,
Lost in Translat! ion). Before long, tongues are wagging about the adventuress and the businessman, possibly driving the wife to a rash act.
A Good Woman retains Wilde's plot--though its 19th century moral concerns don't have the same punch in 1930s Italy--and tosses aside most of his impeccable dialogue, sprinkling his clever epigrams here and there in the otherwise undistinguished dialogue. Johansson, perhaps the most physically sensual actress since Brigitte Bardot, is miscast as the moral prig; Hunt, looking pinched and austere, is miscast as the jaded courtesan. The movie's great saving grace is Tom Wilkinson as a rich man who hopes Hunt will warm his older years. Wilkinson brings a worldly benevolence to every moment he's on screen, making the lines that weren't written by Wilde sound as crisp and wise as if they were.
--Bret Fetzer
9:59 AM
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