The Incredible Shrinking Oscar Winner

Helen Hunt copped a best actress Academy Award for As Good As It Gets, and maybe that's as good as it'll ever get for her.

Anybody see Pay It Forward, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion and Bobby to watch her playing thankless roles blandly? You may have seen What Women Want and/or Cast Away, but do you even remember Hunt was there?

Perhaps directing is her return ticket to significance. On television, where her misplaced debut Then She Found Me might be an afternoon delight for bored homemakers cuddling bon bons.

Then She Found Me is essentially Baby Mama without the jokes, although Hunt and her actors seem to believe they’re there. Hunt plays April Epner, a kindergarten teacher who wants to be a mother. Her marriage to a nerd (Matthew Broderick) ends when he moves back in with his mother. April’s adoptive mother just died. Her biological mother is Bette Midler, whose character has a name but it doesn’t matter because she’s always Bette Midler.

There’s also a Mr. Right, played by the rightest of misters in these affairs, Colin Firth. He’s always Colin Firth; masking his emotions behind that deceptively stern face until the proper moment when he becomes Mr. Darcy-dreamy.

As a director, Hunt is unremarkable except for the extraordinary number of close-ups she gives herself. It isn’t exactly vanity since April scarcely wears makeup on her perpetually strained face; more like an expensive screen test for that meaty comeback role Hunt seeks.

[AP photo]

Comments

[jane]

I'm a big fan of Elinor Lipman, the author of the book from which this movie was adapted -- and I read the book many moons ago and totally dug it. It's too bad the wit and warmth of the novel didn't seem to translate to screen -- sounds like even consuming some quality bon-bons wouldn't help this.