HOPE FLOATS (director: Forest Whitaker; cast: Sandra Bullock (Birdee Pruitt), Harry Connick Jr. (Justin Matisse), Gena Rowlands (Ramona Calvert), Mae Whitman (Bernice Pruitt), Michael Pare (Bill Pruitt), Kathy Najimy (Toni Post), Rosanna Arquette (Friend), 1998)
Sandra Bullock as Birdee Pruitt, is the prom queen who learns on a national tv talk show that her husband Bill (Pare) is having an affair with her best friend (Arquette). She had been suckered into appearing on the show thinking she was getting a makeover, and is startled to see her friend and her husband blare it all out on the tube.This crushes her. So she takes her daughter Bernice (Mae) and moves back in with her eccentric mother Ramona Calvert (Gena) in a small town in Texas. Birdee is pictured as the loyal and true wife, who married her high school sweetheart and is left psychologically scarred by that incident. She has lost the boldness she once had, and seems unsure of herself for the first time in her life, as she is filled with self-pity. This very ordinary story is related in soap opera style, evoking heart tugging sympathy for the victim. How could you not feel sorry for her?
The Steven Rogers's script adds a bit of conflict to the story by having the mother-daughter relationship be strained. But the conflict is one-sided, as the daughter is just a brat and the mother is just perfect. All the daughter moans throughout the film is that she wants her father back. When the father does come back, he asks for a divorce, but he fails to take her back with him. That took care of that little conflict.
A romance was introduced by way of the Harry Connick Jr. character. He's Justin Matisse, someone who always had a crush on the very pretty all-American girl, but never had the nerve to pursue the popular cheerleader. He conveniently pops up wherever she is; and, comes across as a handsome cowboy and real nice guy, who would be ideally suited for her. At least, that's what mamma Ramona thinks, as she tries to push them together. At this point of the film, I was hoping for some comedy or music to break out, like someone singing: Matchmaker, Matchmaker, make me a match...
This film just couldn't move me with this familiar storyline; its purpose was to try and get me so misty eyed for these two nice people who can't find romance together. But by the film's conclusion, there is the predictable happy ending, with the virtues of a nuclear family back in tack. The last shot is of the couple out on a family style date, supposedly on their way to future marital bliss. I guess this is ok, because you really can't root against them, and the way this film was slowly moving along, with lots of wasted artistic shots of the small-town that had no impact on the story; at least, it satisfied an audience who would appreciate seeing such a clean-cut and prosaic romance. It was truely a woman's picture.
The nicest thing about this film was that it made for pleasant viewing. There was nothing to really get upset about. Sandra Bullock is very pretty and very nice. She has the best line in the film about her husband: "The harder I tried to be what he wanted me to be, the less I saw in his eyes. And then one day I looked and I was gone." Her new suitor wants to be independent and live out the American dream without conforming to society's wishes. That is also commendable. He is following his own dreams, building an interesting house out of stained glass and antique Texas pine.The daughter, who was the most annoying one in the film, is upset that her father is no longer living at home, something lots of children at her young age experience, but can't do anything about. No one tells her how to behave properly, so she continues to be a pest. The problem with all this, is that these topics are very similar to the real life situations of many Americans, but this film adds no new insights to the problems or any kind of humanity to it. It just ends on an uninspired happy note. It, therefore, was unable to rise to the emotional level needed to sustain a sense of drama. The result is: that there is nothing special about this film to recommend it, nor is there anything particularly horrid about it to urge you to avoid it.
REVIEWED ON 6/20/99 GRADE: C-
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews