SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Kidskycom It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

Seraherrera The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Gary The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

slightlymad22 I'll admit from the off, I love Sandra Bullock. With her gorgeous girl next door looks, I adore her, and will usually give anything she is in a chance. she remains one of the most talented and beautiful women in movies, and her ladylike sexiness is in rare supply. Any movie becomes promising just by having her name in it's cast.Plot In A Paragraph: Birdee Pruitt (Bullock) is an housewife whose life is turned upside when her husband Bill (Michael Pare) reveals his infidelity (with her best friend Connie) to her on a talk show. She goes to live with her mother (Rowlands) in the small town in which she grew up, where everyone knows of her television appearance. It's not long before an old friend, Justin (Connick, Jr.), has entered her life, sparking a potential romance.The film was choreographed by Patsy Swayze. Harry Connick, Jr. Is OK (if a little bland) as Justin Whilst Kathy Najimy has a small role as Talk Show host Toni Post as does Rosanna Arquette as Connie and Bill Cobbs also pops up as a Nurse. As for Sandra Bullock she is as watchable as always, but these are not ninety of her better minutes.

juneebuggy This is one of those guilty pleasure type movies I find myself watching just about every time I catch it on TV. Its not perfect, a total chick flick but also completely addictive and pretty great. Sandra Bullock plays Birdee Calvert, a Chicago wife who returns home to her small Texas hometown after her husband reveals on a talk show that he's (been) having an affair with her best friend.Bullock is as always likable and I enjoyed watching her (get drunk) trying to put her life back together again with the help of her eccentric taxidermy loving mother (Gena Rowlands) and a yummy (in an awkward sort of way) Harry Connick Jr. All the performances seem authentic and this doesn't really fall into romantic comedy genre(which may be why I like it). It's more of a family drama complete with all the tears laughter and love that incorporates. The small town atmosphere also really adds to this as her old classmates revel in seeing a former beauty queen taken down a notch.The one standout performance here would have to go to the little girl playing her daughter Bernice, she is just fantastic. That scene towards the end when she runs after her dad crying "you want me" "take me with you" just kills me. Well that and Connick leaning up against his pick-up with a handful of flowers and 'those' Levis'. 12/7/14

David Holt (rawiri42) Was Bill Pruitt totally mad to want to leave Birdee (Sandra Bullock)? I mean, if you're going to make a movie about a cuckolded wife, you can't do it effectively using Sandra as your actress. She is the most desirable woman on the planet - not just in looks but as a genuinely sincere person - not to mention a damn good actress. Heck! I can't look at a woman without comparing her with Sandra (which, I guess, is why I'm single - no one meets the standard!)Even in this movie, I can't help feeling that Birdee has a lot of the real Sandra in her. Even though she is beautiful, she is not conceited or vindictive. Harry Connick Jr. as Justin is equally sensitive and doesn't stalk her, even though he clearly counts his blessings that he has a second chance to have what he was too slow to get the first time. He genuinely woos her in the real old-fashioned way which is quite a pleasant change from most so-called romance movies these days.And Mae Whitman as Birdee's 9-year-old daughter, Bernice shows her to be the star that she has, since Hope Floats was made, become. It always amazes me how young children are able to act so convincingly in traumatic domestic situations such as Bernice had to. Full marks to Mae!Of course, a true queen of the silver screen, Gena Rowlands as Birdee's mum, is everything we have come to expect of her - a tender, all-knowing matriarch who holds everything together.All in all, a fine movie that, in my opinion, is worth more than the 5.8 that viewers have given it. Definitely a movie I will happily watch again, and again over the years.

mnpollio As a rule, I really enjoy Sandra Bullock and have often felt that she is a truly underrated actress. Fans would be well-advised to steer far away from Hope Floats, a vapid insufferable morass of chick-flick clichés that storm the camera and bludgeon the viewer into idiocy.Bullock is cast as Birdie Pruitt, a former Texas high school cheerleader and beauty queen whose charmed life as a stay-at-home mom crashes to the ground when her philandering husband Michael Pare and her "best friend" Rosanna Arquette punk her on national TV by announcing their affair and his intention to abandon Birdie and their daughter Mae Whitman. The film is already off to a rocky start with this introduction. It is obvious that the film is stacking the deck with sympathy for Birdie because only complete low-lifes would decide to emotionally annihilate another person unawares in public while trying to pretend it is all for the better, much less to unleash this with the daughter sitting in the studio audience. Untrained and broke, Birdie and her daughter go to live with her mother Gena Rowlands to ostensibly lick her wounds and try to re-assemble her life. Then the chick-flick clichés fly fast and furious. Because Bullock was a former cheerleader in high school, we know that the conclusion is that she also had to be a stuck-up snot who has now received her deserved comeuppance (although the film provides us with no real proof of this). Will there be a legion of jealous former high school rivals who revel in Birdie's misfortune? Check! Will the only people willing to give Birdie a break be those she overlooked in the past? Check. Will Birdie's daughter prove to be a real handful through the whole experience? Check. Will Birdie's mom be wise in that way only on screen mothers are? Check. Will there be one of those painful moments where the women don garish outfits and feather boas to dance around the room lip-synching to a song to cheer someone up? Double-check! Will there be a romantic interest who has been pining for Birdie for years? Of course! Blech! The film is such by-the-numbers schmaltz that you can guess where everything is going just by the synopsis. What you cannot guess is how utterly disagreeable and repellent it is while getting there. Director Forest Whitaker (yes, the actor who eventually won an Oscar) provides schizophrenic direction so that the tone of the film is all over the map. The opening set-up seems lifted from a bad TV sitcom, while the remainder of the film lurches between mawkish, maudlin, depressing and incomprehensibly boring. The relationship between Birdie and her mom is half-baked and that between Birdie and her daughter is excruciating. Whitman has apparently been instructed to play every other scene in full-screech mode giving us an obnoxious, selfish and fairly odious caricature of a spoiled brat. If the film were to omit all of the scenes of Whitman having a tantrum, it would be at least 30 minutes shorter.I would venture to say that three-quarters of the film is devoted to watching Birdie mope. Bullock is an actress of sunny disposition and ebullience - and she shines in roles that allow her to exploit these attributes. This role robs her of those gifts and we are left with a rather deadening characterization. There is only so much that one can take of watching this sad-sack wander aimlessly across the landscape. It is not just that Birdie is a drain, but that she actually seems to actively enjoy her chronic wallows in self-pity. The film should further be charged with criminal neglect for squandering the tremendous talents of Rowlands in a badly written part. When she is forced to don a funky costume and lip-synch, I truly felt for the actress.Perhaps the funniest aspect of the film is that the best performance comes from Harry Connick Jr., who makes a lot out of the normally thankless stock role of the love interest. The entire part is absurd. Birdie is largely a charisma-free character, yet we are supposed to believe that there is an ideal man that has remained single and unattached for years - despite her marriage - in the off chance that Birdie should once again come on the market. The buff and smiling Connick is a veritable wish list of things rebound women are searching for in a tough yet sensitive guy - and he always seems to be photographed in a golden hue. The only thing the film misses at providing with this obvious wish fulfillment character is a gratuitous nude scene, which would only enliven this otherwise dead film. Because Connick is in on the ridiculousness of the role and his character is free to be an antidote to the heroine's unending self-absorption, he pours on the charm and becomes the only spot of life in an otherwise dead film. The fact that it takes our droopy heroine the entire running time to take him up on his romantic advances indicates less a cautious woman than one who is having too much fun wallowing in her misery.In the end, and despite Connick's work, the film is an absolute mess. Bullock has had better days and there are better entries in this genre that fill the bill. Hope may well float as the title suggests, but so does pond scum and this film has more in common with that.