Movie Review: ***^Hope Floats (1998)

This is a very good character study, which starts with the premise, what if your best friend, and your husband, expose that they are having an affair on national television in some kind of talk show.  Can it get any worse than that?  This movie shows that it can, but then hope floats and things start turning around.  I must admit this is not my favorite Sandra Bullock film.  It is a bit too slow.  Birdee (Sandra Bullock) and Matisse (Harry Connick Jr.) have something going, but it really develops slowly, and by the end of the movie is still just in its starting stages.  The relationship that needs to resolve is that between Birdee and her daughter (Mae Whitman).  She is always waiting for father to pick her up, and blames the relationship mess on her mother.  The finally begin to crawl out of a hole, but it is interesting how this is done.  Grandma (Ramona Calvert) has a very big roll in keeping everything going.