Hope floats, Sandra drifts, Harry sinks

Review by NOOL

OH, look! That naive nymphet, that perfect girl-next-door from While You Were Sleeping with the perfect stupid life has been forced to become an adult and face up to the bitter truths of reality.

Within the first five minutes of Hope Floats, the latest Sandra Bullock vehicle, our protagonist has been wrenched from the niceness of While You Were Sleeping and thrown into the realities of talk shows, adultery, divorce and going home.

And it happens just like that.

While on a television talk show for what she believes is about some makeover or something, Bullock who plays the nasal Birdie is ambushed by the awful revelation that her husband and her best friend are having sex in their living room when she isn't looking. It's telecasted throughout the land and everyone from near and far knows how #@$*&! our perfect Birdie's life really is.

Tragic but quite possible, even probable, in the Promised Land.

With her little daughter in tow she must start again and what better place than where it all began? Birdie goes home to Mum and Dad in Smithsville, Texas... population 345 or something like that.

In the opening scenes of Hope Floats, in the seconds in which Bullock realises that the talk show is not about a makeover, we witness a fleeting range of emotions that flutter across her face in the most convincing way. It becomes something more than mere acting. And for a few moments there we actually begin to see that maybe Sandra Bullock isn't The-Hype-Over-Nothing whom idiots all over the world raved about despite stinky performances.

Sadly, the film's initial moments are its best. For immediately after this, Hope Floats quickly becomes pure indulgence and aimlessly so.

A pity because the story itself has lots of potential: Ex-beauty queen who was probably very snotty and superior is separated from her high-school, football-hero-sweetheart husband - on national television no less, and returns to the scene of all her conquests, amidst some satisfied resentment on the parts of the female factions of the small community.

Strangely, Forest Whitaker of the Crying Game fame, who has done much work dealing with very Afro-American themes, takes the helm with a film that is fundamentally about White people and their particular philosophies on life and loss.

The disjointed, boring and tedious way with which this story is told simply seems to imply that Whitaker really doesn't have his finger on the pulse of White America. That is not to say that black directors can only make films about black people but rather - you either have to have lived it or tell a terribly surface story.

Which is what Hope Floats quickly becomes. Unlike something like the atrociously terrible Waiting to Exhale - which in spite of all its terribleness was apparently an accurate and sensitive reading of the state of the Modern African American woman - Whitaker fails to convey any kind of distinctness about the people he is trying to portray beyond the usual small town, white trash, middle American cliches.

And it takes so long to move. Calling it leisurely would be a lie.

There has been extensive hype about Whitaker as well and that too is a bit curious since he, like Bullock, is vastly over-rated.

Which brings us back to the overblown capabilities which have been accorded to Miss Bullock. Sorry, but except for erratic spurts in the beginning segments, as well as a remarkable singing sequence with the entire family, there are few winning moments in Hope Floats.

Let's face it, Bullock's days are numbered and it has nothing... or rather, very little to do with the nature of her name. Certainly, there are some heart-wrenching moments especially with little Mae Whitman who plays Birdie's daughter Bernice who, with her four eyes and disturbing demeanour, is improbably likeable.

Straight out of Independence Day and One Fine Day, Mae Whitman gives us a convincing and touching performance... even when she is irritating. She IS supposed to be so.

And Gena Rowlands is a winner in the role of Birdie's eccentric taxidermist mother. She too has her own dramatic moments and more importantly some quite poignant scenes all her own.

However, Harry Connick Jr. is hugely disappointing. While Bullock seems the right choice, Connick still cannot remove himself from being pegged as a serial killer ever since his role in Copy Cat. You just expect him to skin Bullock the next time she gives another wooden rendition in a wooden scene.

Now their relationship in this film is REALLY contrived - why would two such boring people want to see each other?

Michael Pare as the lying cheating husband is hateful and superior and little featured beyond the one scene which he shares with Mae Whitman.

Hope Floats may be boring but it certainly doesn't stink... and while it has a few moments and an overall air of credible filmmaking, it is too boring to tolerate. But, it all really depends on the viewer. If you are a die-hard Bullock fan, you will forgive this one - she has her moments.

I know at least one little man who will quietly forgive this film anyway; he loves Sandra so. E

Copyright Star Publications (M) Bhd.
Source: Pg. 16, Weekender, The Star, 31st October 1998

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