First-time director, co-writer, and co-producer Helen Hunt confers a nice big fat role on Oscar-winning actress Helen Hunt, at an age when roles of any size are fast drying up. (A do-it-yourself movie.) The forty-four-year-old leading lady portrays a thirty-nine-year-old teacher whose biological clock has started ticking loudly. In rapid succession, her new husband abandons her, a potential replacement heaves into view the next morning, her adoptive mother dies, and her unknown birth mother contacts her out of the blue. Oh, and she passes a home pregnancy test, bringing her namby-pamby husband back into the picture. Most of this, a girl-talk toot, is played for dish-the-dirt titters. Bette Midler, as the biological mother, will tend to turn anything into shtick, and the reliable Matthew Broderick and Colin Firth, as the old and new prospects respectively, are pretty much limited to one note apiece. (Salman Rushdie, wildly out of his element, sees the light of day as an obstetrician.) Hunt, however, with her drawn face, downturned mouth, roadmap of worry lines, and courage in displaying all this, appears more like a figure of Greek tragedy, an Electra maybe, even a Medea. A purging outburst of anger at her mendacious mother, the movie’s top highlight, confirms this impression. The denouement turns out to be unexpectedly touching. Which is an oblique way to say that the preceding had prepared us for less. (2008) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.