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In Waiting to Exhale, his previous directorial effort, Forest Whitaker struck a chord with female audiences and elicited millions of `You Go Girl!' interjections by showing a revengeful Angela Bassett torching her cheating husband's personal belongings. Not more than ten minutes into Hope Floats, Sandra Bullock is cutting up her ex's dress shirts. I guess these revenge scenes must score through the roof with test audiences.
Bullock plays Birdee Pruitt, who in the opening scene finds out that her high school sweetheart/husband has been tupping her best friend for over a year. Tail between her legs, Birdee scurries back home to her ancestral birthplace with daughter Bernice in tow. The two runaways shack up with Mom (Gena Rowlands) in Smithville, home of Birdee's glory years.
In her heyday, Birdee was everything I despise – beautiful, popular, a cheerleader and something called `The Queen of Corn'. This apparently means something completely different is Smithville than it did where I grew up (see `Back Door Beauty' in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas).
Post-separation, life finds Birdee on the low side of life's Sine curve. She sleeps all day, never leaves the house and seems confined to ratty bathrobes. Like any woman, she runs cold-hot-cold-hot toward her family and her potential suitors. As an added flaw, Birdee also appears as motherly as a jar of angry scorpions, but I think that's just because of the amazing acting stylings of Ms. Bullock. I mean, what does this girl do after headlining two of the biggest bombs (Speed 2:Cruise Control and Two If by Sea) of recent memory? She stars and executive produces this bothersome bore of a picture. Plus, in Hope Floats she delivers her best lines into the toilet during an implied vomiting scene. Implied vomiting – do us a favor and show the phlegmy stew-like chunks, for Christ's sake. Up next for Bullock, a remake of Pillow Talk with Carrot Top in the male lead. Way to go Sandra!
More disturbing than Bullock is musician-turned-actor Harry Connick, Jr. as Justin Matisse, the boy who has always loved Birdee but was too shy to tell her how he really felt in high school. Is it just me or is this guy horribly disfigured? It looks like someone shot him face-first out of a cannon into a cement wall. Do women actually find him attractive? It seems to me that he could just snap at any second and turn into his character in Copycat. His acting style and accent remind me of Spike Lee, and that ain't good, G.
And don't get me started on the stupid kid. Can there be movie like this without the token Jonathan Lipnicki character? Sweet fancy Moses, I can't take it anymore. Is one original thought or idea too much to ask for?
At the end of the picture, Birdee explains to her daughter that every story has a difficult beginning and a sad end, but it's the middle that counts. Ironic since the middle of Hope Floats made my eyes roll back into my skull. Then Birdee said that hope always floats to the top, not unlike a rancid turd in the festering bowl of conventional romance pics. FYI - if you have trouble getting it down, the trick is to cover it up with toilet paper and then flush it.
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