Hope Floats Reviews

No, it sinks slowly, like a stone in molasses. Her open face surrounded by a shiny mane you just know smells like Herbal Essence shampoo, Sandra Bullock is like the wiggliest, friendliest, most bright-eyed puppy alive. Whose heart is hard enough not to soften before her guileless charm? So you're rooting for one-time Corn Queen Birdee Pruitt from the get-go. How could her tacky, so-called best friend Connie (Roseanna Arquette) go on a sleazy talk show and tell the world she's having an affair with Birdee's hound-dog husband (Michael Pare)? With Birdee there, no less, isolated in a soundproof booth and thinking she's going on-air to get a beauty makeover. Anybody dealt such a hand gets the knee-jerk sympathy vote, especially when she holds her head up and manages a wan little smile in the face of abject humiliation. But this sodden romance manages to squander that considerable store of good will over the course of two very long hours at the heartbreak hotel, masquerading here as the home of Birdee's mom, Ramona (Gena Rowlands). Nothing earthshaking happens once Birdee gets home to Smithville, TX: Mama Ramona tells her to get off her duff and on with life, old acquaintances gloat secretly -- and not so secretly -- at the sight of the high-school golden girl brought low, down-home charmer Justin Matisse (Harry Connick Jr.) tries to rekindle their adolescent romance. Director Forest Whitaker, who appears to have been typed as a female-friendly director in the wake of WAITING TO EXHALE's runaway success, drags out the already painfully slow proceedings with syrupy dissolves, slo-mo sequences and redundant flashbacks, underscoring it all with an intrusively obvious country soundtrack that matches lyrics to emotions with cringe-inducing exactness.