moonspinner55 Review of Hope Floats

Hope Floats (1998)

Lots of down-home, quirky characters, but the details just aren't right...

[5/10 · 6 October 2002]

This wheeze of a story--about a humiliated young wife and mother "finding herself"--is enhanced by an appealing leading lady, lots of camera tricks and a quirky sense of romance and fun...but the connect-the-dots screenplay really needed an overhaul. For instance, just why is that photo-developing machine continually mangling the pictures--and why does Sandra Bullock get docked for it when it's clearly the machine's fault? A scene in a bar, with Bullock drunk and babbling, also makes no sense--and later in the bathroom, while she's hanging over the toilet, mama Gena Rowlands comes in with no words of wisdom for her daughter and drops the ball. Rowlands is saddled with an infuriating character: is she an earthy soul or just an eccentric pain in the neck? Just after Sandra arrives, Rowlands offers nothing but awful put-downs. I don't know how women might feel, but Harry Connick, Jr. seems a staid and sorry excuse for a prince charming (he has no scenes where he shows us any charisma or self-worth). Sandra's kid, played by Mae Whitman, gives the best performance here, although she's around possibly too much (I did love her little glasses though). As for Bullock, she's just right in some scenes (like the one where she asks an old acquaintance for a job) and over-the-top in others. A good director would be able to scale her stridency down, but Forest Whitaker seems a novice who's not really into this story. I wasn't either. ** from ****