Starring Helen Hunt, Colin Firth, and Bette Midler. Rated PG. Opens Friday, April 25, at the Cinemark Tinseltown

The she in Then She Found Me is twofold: it refers to the biological mother who tracks down April Epner, a tightly wound schoolteacher played by Helen Hunt, who also directs; and it also suggests the child who is waiting to be born or adopted by April, whatever can happen first to the pushing-40 New Yorker.

April has a few teensy problems with all of this. Chiefly, her recent husband and very long-time boyfriend (Matthew Broderick, channelling Paul Simon) has just dumped her. And she is also losing her sickly adoptive mother (Lynn Cohen). So taking on a new mother seems a bit tricky at the moment. Of course, it’s hard to say no to a mom who looks and acts so much like Bette Midler. In fact, she is Bette Midler, relatively restrained as a local TV personality with an inclination toward confabulation and a poor sense of personal boundaries.

The film, adapted from Elinor Lipman’s novel by Hunt and two others, drifts toward sitcom rhythms. But it offers enough leisurely moments and true-to-life bumps to stake out its own cinematic territory. It’s primarily an entertainment, of course, and in this it scores many enjoyable points with Colin Firth as a British writer raising two kids on his own, one of whom is in April’s class—hint, hint.

A number of intrafamily dynamics are raised, to varying effect. It’s never quite clear what underlies April’s marriage, or why she finds her ex so irresistible. And some scenes with Breakfast With Scot’s Ben Shenkman as her doctor brother feel underdeveloped. But in case you’ve forgotten, Midler is in this movie. The screen certainly brightens whenever she enters the frame—especially in contrast with the film’s gaunt star, who seems to have figured out all the worst angles from which to film herself. Call it a nonvanity project, and one that deserves to be found.