HOPE FLOATS
A Film Review by Brian Takeshita
Rating: ** out of ****
Imagine yourself invited to a talk show because you think you've won a free makeover. Then imagine that on the show, for all the world to see, you find out your best friend is having an affair with your husband. At the rate trash television shows do things like this these days, you might not have to imagine it; it might have happened to you already. For the rest of us, we're given HOPE FLOATS, in which Birdee Pruitt (Sandra Bullock) is humiliated in just such a way on national television. Birdee loads up the station wagon with her possessions and her daughter and leaves her unfaithful husband in Chicago to move back to her hometown of Smithville, Texas.
In trying to start her life over again, Birdee is faced with several obstacles. For one thing, just about everyone in the small town has seen her infamous television appearance. "We have a satellite dish," says one of her high school classmates, "and so we got to see it twice." Another problem is that her daughter Bernice (Mae Whitman) doesn't quite get the idea of separation - she still thinks her father will be coming to get them. Birdee's overbearing mother (Gena Rowlands), with whom Birdee and Bernice have come to live, isn't much help either. "You look terrible. Have you taken up drinking?" is the way she greets Birdie at her door.
The first half of HOPE FLOATS is devoted to Birdee trying to reincorporate herself into life in Smithville. There are some nice scenes where she meets different classmates who never left the small town. Some are happy to see her, while others revel in the fact that she has been made a fool of and has come crawling back home. Here the movie shows promise, but then something happens about midway through. It begins to lose direction and drag....and drag....and drag.
One direction the film tries to take is love story. Birdee's mother tries to set her up with Justin Matisse (Harry Connick, Jr.), who left Smithville for California years ago, but then came back. Justin used to have a crush on Birdee, who was less than sympathetic, and it seems nothing has changed. Justin is still very interested, and Birdee is still very stand-offish toward him. Now, you'd expect that there will be sparks as the movie progresses, but there aren't. The whole film is peppered with instances where Justin gets close, but Birdee soon turns cold. It's really no matter, since there isn't any chemistry between them, and when they finally do get together, it's totally forced.
Another direction taken is the reconciliation Birdee must make with her past. Birdee has issues with her mother, with her father, with herself, and with half the townsfolk. There are plenty of scenes where we see Birdee deep in thought, and an image of her going through the same thing, but at a younger age, is superimposed. Two problems exist here. First, we never get the feeling how these instances fit in with the rest of the movie. When they appear, they seem isolated and disjointed. There's hardly much of a resolution for many of them. Second, when the past images are displayed, they are so vague that it's really mostly guesswork as to what they're supposed to show. In most of them, I could barely make out the image of a young girl, so I assumed it was supposed to be Birdee.
There's also a subplot involving Birdee's daughter and how she doesn't have any friends at school. In fact, she makes an enemy of the school bully, Big Dolores (Rachel Lena Snow) by accidentally hitting her in the face with a volleyball. There's this big buildup to an after-school fight. Bernice is scared. The fight occurs with kids shouting and screaming and eerie music playing and the whole thing looks like some kind of nightmare. Then Bernice gets up and goes home, unscratched. I suppose director Forrest Whitaker didn't think anybody wanted to see a kid actually all beaten up, but by giving her only a bruised ego, we don't see the significance of the whole thing. Worse, Bernice's family then cheers her up by lip-synching to a song by the Temptations in a scene which was so obviously put there just to break up the monotony. Too bad it wasn't very funny. In fact, it was kind of embarrassing.
Whitaker engages in a severe overuse of devices which are supposed to provoke emotions. He has Bullock cry too often, he includes too many slow motion sequences, and he puts in too many musical montages, only serving to trivialize each supposedly dramatic moment and drag the pacing even further. There are even scenes which are in the movie for no apparent reason except to mislead us into thinking there will be some kind of payoff down the road. I guess they are there just to fill time. Someone should remind him that sometimes, the saying "less is more" is actually true.
You find the performances in HOPE FLOATS are pretty good when you can concentrate long enough to pay attention to the screen. Gena Rowlands is fine as Birdee's unflappable mother, and young Mae Whitman does a nice job playing Bernice, the typical precocious movie child. Her part is actually hampered by the script, however, which at first gives her the usual older-than-her-years conversation, but then quickly gives her lines which are not just unrealistic, they are nearly impossible to take from someone so young. You wonder if the screenwriter had actually taken the time to say the sentences out loud. Harry Connick, Jr. delivers some of the corniest lines I've ever heard, my favorite being when he's at the local saloon, trying to get Birdee to cut a rug with him. "Dancing is like a conversation between two people," he says. "Talk to me." I had to control my laughter.
Sandra Bullock clocks in with her most mature performance to date. She is strong, tender, vulnerable, and funny. There's a scene where Birdee is trying to get a job through an employment agency headed by a classmate she didn't treat very well in high school, and the classmate, enjoying the turn of the tables, decides to put Birdee in her place. Bullock delivers a short monologue which simultaneously shows all four of the qualities I have mentioned. The movie is almost worth seeing for those few spoken lines. Just grit your teeth at the rest.
Review posted June 12, 1998
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