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.

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

This movie excites me as it is a Sandra Bullock movie.  However, in this movie the worst possible thing that could happen does.  Birdee (Bullock) is at a talk show, where her best friend reveals to her that she and Birdee's husband are having an affair, and he now wants to be with her.  Birdee goes home, and confronts her humiliation.  Birdee's mother (Gena Rowlands) is determined to get her daughter up off the floor by reintroducing her to an old friend Justin Matisse (Harry Connick Jr.).  The focus of the film is the change in the family relationship.  One of the most touching aspects is when Birdee explains to her mother what she liked about her husband.
The movie ends with not everything resolved, but with Hope beginning to float after a long winter.  I like Bullock, and Connick is also very good.  A movie like this is built on relationships.  It makes you want to scream to see a family destroyed due to some selfishness.  However, family lives own.