The one thing you wouldn't want during those critical moments of childbirth is the prospect of Salman Rushdie at the end of the bed with the birth tongs.

Yet the Fatwah-provoking author and social butterfly bizarrely takes on the role of a gurning obstetrician in the bitter-sweet directorial debut of actress Helen Hunt.

It's a peculiar choice and one which jars badly with the lo-fi romance that Hunt's childless primary school teacher April is pursuing with Colin Firth's mercurial single dad.

Based on Elinor Lipman's novel, this follows April - a world-weary wannabe mom - as she's crassly informed by her weak-as-water hubby Ben (Broderick) that marriage is not what he wants.

Shell-shocked, she reasons "things can't get any worse". Her Jewish adoptive mother promptly exits this world, leaving April cast away in a sea of emotional uncertainties.

An anchor is provided by Firth's new mannish dad - the father of one of her pupils. However, she also finds herself heading for the rocks when her real mom - a brash Bette Midler (is there any other?) - hoves into view and announces that Steve McQueen's her real dad.

Of course, he's not...but it's the first in a sequence of emotionally-convenient lies that Midler peddles in her desperation to re-engage with the daughter she gave away all those years before.

It doesn't help that April is also susceptible to the odd nostalgic knee-trembler with Ben - an occasional tumble that doesn't exactly find favour with Firth's smitten boyfriend.

This is not without its attractions - an occasionally waspishly witty script and some unexpected dramatic tangents - but the characters never seem more than a casually bagged collection of tics and mannerisms.

Hunt actually looks older than Midler - a miracle of the embalmer's art - and the wacky decision to let Rushdie on set knocks the delicate narrative off-kilter. What next? Stephen Hawking playing a gynaecologist?

It's not an unpleasant way to spend your time...but neither is knitting.

Tim Evans