Hope Floats

Look, I can appreciate enjoying this movie. I've liked many a fluffy piece of garbage, but something about this movie just didn't come together. I could never figure out the relationship of the leads. So, he likes her (ostensibly because she's beautiful, since that's the only compliment he offers) and she just sorta goes with it. He gets all pissy that the woman dumped on live TV by her husband isn't ready to date a couple weeks after her public humiliation and she just sorta... Goes with it anyway and dates him while not dating him and dating she's not really dating him. I guess? I do not understand the motives of either of them. Mae Whitman is the best part of this movie, and I normally quite like Sandra Bullock. The whole thing just sorta happens to you, wandering from one plot point to the next with no real sense of a larger purpose or real message. Oof.

This film is incredibly good! Deep, thoughtful and sophisticated. Sandra Bullock would have deserved an Oscar for it (this is one of her best films) and Geena Rowlands is classy as always. I really don't understand who doesn't understand it... it was said to be "too European" - maybe, but the whole story is so American, it couldn't be more that. Forest Whitaker (of course with the great actors) was able to show us how the emotions work in a woman... the wide range of emotions. Here was nothing simplified as in the life is nothing simplified that's why this film is great. Sandra Bullock is a smart, very sensitive, very good actress who can show her talent and deepness as much in dramatic roles (Hope Floats, Love and War, Divine Secret etc.) as in the comedies. She gives life- and real life with real emotions for her characters.