A Hologram for the King (2016) [R] ***/****

A film review by Ann Hornaday for washingtonpost.com on April 21, 2016.

Tom Hanks plays a globalized version of Willy Loman in A Hologram for the King, Tom Tykwer’s intriguing, if uneven, adaptation of the Dave Eggers novel.

Hanks brings all of his native, optimistic can-do attitude to his character, Alan Clay, an aging corporate executive working for a communications company in Boston. Thanks to a chance encounter years ago with a nephew of the king of Saudi Arabia, Alan’s been tasked with traveling to the kingdom to sell the government some interactive holographic conferencing technology. Jet-lagged, frequently hung over and perpetually out of his depth, Alan is true to his last name: a man in the process of being formed, in this case by a world that’s changing around him with dizzying uncertainty, beauty and speed.

As Alan tries to navigate the opaque inner workings of Saudi politics and culture — the endless waiting for decision-makers who never appear, the polite non-answers to direct questions, the heat and food and confounding cultural contradictions — he’s grappling with an angry ex-wife back in the United States, as well as a mysterious cyst that has appeared in the upper middle of his back. Meanwhile, he keeps missing the shuttle from his hotel to the desolate industrial park where his hologram presentation is supposed to take place any day now, putting him at the mercy of a genial driver named Yousef (Alexander Black), an American-educated bon vivant who reflexively disables his car in order to avoid being bombed by his girlfriend’s suspicious husband.

Alan and Yousef’s friendship accounts for the least-satisfying plot line in A Hologram for the King, which boasts many — most of them clumsily metaphorical. But the viewer comes to see Saudi Arabia through Alan’s eyes: first as an exotic, forbidding geographical and cultural other, eventually as a quasi-familiar embodiment of economic and social realities that are collapsing into each other faster and more dramatically than ever.

These encounters — some might call them collisions — can be violent or delightful, fraught with both danger and romance. Written and directed by Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run), A Hologram for the King conveys all of these possibilities with a combination of classical realism and bursts of surrealism. Bringing his all-American persona with him, Hanks makes an appropriate foil for Alan’s own regrets, naiveté and dawning sense of self-discovery, especially when he meets a quietly competent Saudi doctor played by Sarita Choudhury. His is the sentimental education of a new cosmopolitan.

The hero’s journey in A Hologram for the King is mostly interior, and it’s ultimately gratifying. In one brief scene, signs for Starbucks and Kentucky Fried Chicken lie unused, either the portents of Western imperialism or the ruins of its decline. A Hologram for the King leaves viewers with the sense that neither one matters as much as the attempt to adapt and connect. It’s that rare fish-out-of-water story in which the fish miraculously manages to stop needing water, and learns to crave air instead. [Hornaday’s rating: 2.5 stars out of 4 = 62.5%

Blogger’s comment: In 42 years of acting in 93 films Tom Hanks has only made two cross-cultural, romantic dramas. The first one was Every Time We Say Goodbye (1986) an Israeli production set in Jerusalem in 1942 during WWII. In that film he played an American pilot flying for the RAF who falls in love with a Sephardi Jewish girl. In this film he plays an American businessman who falls in love with a Saudi Arabian Muslim physician. So, in the two films he has love affairs with Semitic women living in neighboring countries (Palestine and Saudi Arabia), appears with them in tastefully done love scenes, and makes long-term commitments to both of them. Could it possibly be that he made A Hologram for the King as an homage to Cristina Marsillach, his co-star in Every Time We Say Goodbye?

Labels: comedy, cross-cultural, drama, romance, Tom Hanks
IMDb 61/100
MetaScore (critics=58, viewers=58)
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=62, viewers=70)
Blu-ray

 

Ever After: A Cinderella Story (1998) [PG-13] ****

A film review by James Berardinelli.

Every once in a while, a movie surprises me. Such is the case with Andy Tennant's Ever After. Based on the lackluster previews, I was prepared for the worst, but, instead of getting a juvenile, pointless re-telling of the classic Cinderella fairy tale, I was confronted with a delightful re-interpretation. While I won't claim that Ever After is the best cinematic version of the fable, this is deft storytelling, and sure to be a hit with almost everyone who sees it (except, perhaps, unromantic cynics).

One of the most curious things about this movie is the PG-13 rating bestowed upon it by the MPAA. This is the third would-be family film in less than a month to carry that classification, and, while it is understandable in the case of the other two, Dr. Dolittle and Small Soldiers, I am at a loss to explain why Ever After was treated so harshly. Aside from a couple of mild sword fights, the evidence of a whipping (the actual event is not shown), and an inconsequential instance of profanity, there's nothing remotely objectionable about Ever After's content. Parents made wary by the PG-13 need not fret; this picture is entirely suitable for viewing by children of all ages.

Ever After's twist is that it's telling the real Cinderella story from which the Brothers Grimm fable was derived (the two famous fairy tale scribes make a brief appearance in a prologue that also features a cameo by the incomparable Jeanne Moreau). Consequently, there are no pumpkins, mice, magic spells, or fairy godmothers. The love story between a peasant girl and a prince is still at the core, although, in this case, Cinderella (whose name is Danielle), has the kind of progressive attitude that would be more at home in the 1990s than in the 1500s.

The broad strokes of the story are certainly familiar. After the tragic death of her father (Jeroen Krabbe), Danielle (played by Anna Maguire as a little girl, and Drew Barrymore thereafter) is consigned to a life of servitude for her cruel stepmother, Rodmilla (Anjelica Huston), and vain step-sister, Marguerite (Megan Dodds). Danielle has an ally in the household, her second step-sister, Jacqueline (Melanie Lynskey, last seen opposite Kate Winslet in Heavenly Creatures), but she's too meek to stand up to her mother. While Rodmilla, Marguerite, and Jacqueline enjoy as much luxury as their farm house provides, Danielle (dubbed Cinderella by Marguerite for the cinders that always stain her clothing) is forced to scrub the floors, cook the meals, and feed the animals.

One day, when Danielle is picking apples, she spies a man stealing one of her step-mother's horses. It's actually Prince Henry (Dougray Scott), the heir to the throne of France, in the process of running away from his father because he is unwilling to be trapped in a loveless, arranged marriage. Mistaking Henry for a common thief, Danielle knocks him from the horse with a well-aimed apple. After she realizes who he is, she is apologetic, but the meeting leaves an impression on both of them. At the time of their next encounter, Danielle is posing as a countess in order to rescue a family retainer from debtors' prison. She engages the Prince in a spirited debate, and, although he thinks he recognizes her, he can't put a name to the face. Soon, he is scouring the countryside looking for her, and, although Danielle is attracted to him, she avoids contact, fearing that if he learns that she isn't a member of the nobility, he will shun her. Through all of this, there is a fairy godmother of sorts -- Leonardo da Vinci (Patrick Godfrey), who uses science, not magic, to smooth the path of true love.

Movies like Ever After, if fashioned with little skill, become curiosities for pre-teen girls looking for a summer afternoon at the movies. However, Tennant takes this familiar material and crafts a charming, captivating motion picture. He gives the villains a few human qualities, but still manages to make them despicable enough that we feel justified in cheering when they receive their comeuppance. The all-important romance is nicely-developed. Danielle and Henry are clearly fated to be together, but they have to overcome a number of obstacles along the way, including her dishonesty, her step-family's duplicity, and his prejudice. Of course, everything turns out happily ever after (hence, the title), but, as in all romances, our enjoyment lies in observing the games played by the two smitten protagonists en route to that ending.

As good as the costumes and setting are, Tennant does not craft a flawless period piece. In fact, Ever After transpires in a pseudo-16th century that bears only a passing resemblance to the historical reality. Anachronisms abound, both in attitudes and in speech. The characters talk as if they are products of the 1900s, not the 1500s, using idioms that, at the time, were centuries away from making their way into the language. Tennant doesn't appear to be bothered by these inaccuracies, but those who are sticklers for period detail may be distracted by this sort of thing.

Drew Barrymore, continuing to rehabilitate her once-tarnished image, proves that her winning turn as a romantic lead in the otherwise-dreadful The Wedding Singer was no fluke. As Danielle, she radiates tremendous appeal. Like Prince Henry, we are immediately taken not only with Danielle's beauty (which shines through the dirt on her face) but with her spirit. Speaking of the Prince, Dougray Scott (who can also be seen in this summer's Deep Impact) manages the difficult feat of making Henry likable rather than bland (blandness is often the unfortunate fate of the male leads in movies like this). Anjelica Huston and Megan Dodds turn on the bitchiness as step-mom and step-sister, and veteran actors Timothy West and Judy Parfitt have comical turns as the King and Queen of France. Patrick Godfrey's wise-but-humorous da Vinci is a delight.

Tennant, who showed skill at the helm of a romance with his last film, Fools Rush In, has found the right tone for this effort. The love story is wrapped around interludes of comedy, adventure, and drama. It never seems to matter that we know the entire story from the beginning -- the characters, not the plot, capture our attention. One concern I have about this film is that, because it's not high-profile, it has the potential to become lost in the summer crush. Here's hoping that enough viewers discover Ever After to give it a happy ending at the box office. [Berardinelli's rating: *** out of 4]

Labels: Cinderella-story, comedy, drama, fantasy, period, rom-drama-faves, romance  
Internet Movie Database 7.0/10
Metacritic 66/100  
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=75, viewers=70)  
Blu-ray1  
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Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) [PG] ****

Star Trek: Insurrection opens in the village of the Ba’ku - six hundred people living in balance with Nature on a remote planet. Their planet's rings bathe the Ba’ku in a metaphasic radiation that suspends aging, like a fountain of youth. This radiation is coveted by an off-planet group called the Son’a, who suffer from a rapid aging illness. The Son’a have a technology that concentrates the radiation and can reverse aging, but it will render the planet uninhabitable. So the Son’a have made a deal with the Federation to move the Ba’ku off the planet in exchange for the Son’a technology. Discovering the plot, Picard (Patrick Stewart) reminds his superior that they are ignoring the Prime Directive (no interference with the natural development of any culture), and that Earth's history contains many tragic examples of a native population being wiped out or relocated by a powerful group intent on stealing its land or other resources. Picard cannot stop the plot, so he and the Enterprise crew are forced to take desperate measures to protect the Ba’ku and their planet.

Besides being great science fiction, Star Trek: Insurrection uses the Ba’ku and Son’a as symbols to make a statement about geopolitics. Baku is actually the name of the capital of Azerbaijan on the Caspian Sea. It's the center of an oil-rich region that has been coveted for its energy resources for centuries. Imagine that the metaphasic radiation symbolizes oil, the Ba’ku symbolizes the oil-rich, militarily-weak Caspian region, the Son’a symbolize the greedy, rapacious U.S. multinational oil companies, and the Federation symbolizes the powerful, energy-hungry U.S. government. In the same way that the Son’a and the Federation formed an alliance to exploit the helpless Ba’ku, so does the U.S. government work with the U.S. multinational oil companies to exploit oil-rich, militarily-weak nations like Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and others. We may predict that, as global demand for petroleum increases, and exceeds global production, competition for the Caspian region's oil resources will grow even more intense, and this strategic region, bordered by Iran and Russia, could be where the next oil war erupts.

Labels: action, adventure, sci-fi, thriller
Internet Movie Database 6.4/10
MetaScore (critics=64, viewers=58)
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=58, viewers=64)
Blu-ray

James Berardinelli's review (3 stars out of 4)

You've Got Mail (1998) [PG] **** (updated Jan. 25th, 2023)

A film review by Roger Ebert, December 18, 1998.

The appeal of You've Got Mail is as old as love and as new as the Web. It stars Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan as immensely lovable people whose purpose it is to display their lovability for two hours, while we desperately yearn for them to solve their problems, fall into each other's arms and get down to the old rumpy-pumpy.

They meet in a chat room on AOL, and soon they're revealing deep secrets (but no personal facts) in daily and even hourly e-mail sessions. The movie's call to arms is the inane chirp of the maddening You've Got Mail! Voice (which prompts me to growl, Yes, and I'm gonna stick it up your modem!). But the e-mail is really just the MacGuffin -- the device necessary to keep two people who fall in love online from finding out that they already know and hate each other in real life.

The plot surrounds Hanks and Ryan not only with e-mail lore, but with the Yuppie Urban Lifestyle. It's the kind of movie where the characters walk into Starbucks and we never for a moment think product placement! because, frankly, we can't imagine them anywhere else. Where the generations are so confused by modern mating appetites that Joe Fox (the Hanks character) can walk into a bookstore with two young children and introduce them as his brother and his aunt (Matt is my father's son, and Annabel is my grandfather's daughter).

Kathleen, the Meg Ryan character, runs the children's book shop she inherited from her mother. She and her loyal staff read all the books, know all the customers, and provide full service and love. Joe Fox is the third generation to run a chain of gigantic book megastores. When the new Fox Books opens around the corner from Kathleen's shop, it's only a matter of time until the little store is forced out of business. Kathleen turns for advice and solace to her anonymous online friend -- who is, of course, Joe.

And yet this is not quite an Idiot Plot, so called because a word from either party would instantly end the confusion. It maintains the confusion only up to a point, and then does an interesting thing: allows Joe to find out Kathleen's real identity while still keeping her quite reasonably in the dark. And, oh, the poignant irony, as Joe has to stand there and be insulted by the woman he loves. You're nothing but a suit! she says. That's my cue, he says. Goodnight. And as he nobly conceals his pain, we are solaced only by the knowledge that sooner or later the scales will fall from her eyes.

The movie was directed by Nora Ephron, who also paired Hanks and Ryan in Sleepless in Seattle (1993), and has made an emotional, if not a literal, sequel. That earlier film was partly inspired by An Affair to Remember, and this one is inspired by The Shop Around the Corner, but both are really inspired by the appeal of Ryan and Hanks, who have more winning smiles than most people have expressions.

Ephron and her co-writer, her sister Delia Ephron, have surrounded the characters with cultural references that we can congratulate ourselves on recognizing: not only Jane Austen, but also the love affair carried on by correspondence between George Bernard Shaw and Mrs. Patrick Campbell. Not only The Godfather (which contains the answers to all of life's questions), but also Anthony Powell and Generalissimo Franco. (It is one of the movie's quietly hilarious conceits that the little store's elderly bookkeeper, played by Jean Stapleton, was in love years ago with a man who couldn't marry her because he had to run Spain.) The plot I shall not describe, because it consists of nothing but itself, so any description would make it redundant. What you have are two people the audience desires to see together, and a lot of devices to keep them apart. There is the added complication that both Hanks and Ryan begin the movie with other partners (Parker Posey and Greg Kinnear -- respectively, of course). The partners get dumped without much fuss, and then we're left with these two lonely single people, who have neat jobs but no one to rub toes with, and who are trapped by fate in a situation where he is destroying her dream, and she is turning to him (without knowing it is him) for consolation. Perfect.

The movie is sophisticated enough not to make the megastore into the villain. Say what you will, those giant stores are fun to spend time in, and there is a scene where Kathleen ventures anonymously into Joe's big store for the first time and looks around, at the magazine racks and the cafe and all the books -- and then there's the heartbreaking moment when she overhears a question in the children's section, and she knows the answer but of course the clerk doesn't, and so she supplies the answer but it makes her cry, and Joe overhears everything. Whoa.

Blogger's comment:

And for You've Got Mail, the emotional, if not a literal, sequel to Sleepless in Seattle, as film critic Roger Ebert writes in his review, I don't have a sequel, but I do have a one-scene epilogue, a few months later, after Joe and Kathleen are married and living in Joe's apartment with his golden retriever Brinkley:

JOE: Sweetheart, I've been thinking about your old bookstore The Shop Around The Corner.

KATHLEEN: What about it, Joe?

JOE: Well, what if we recreate it inside Fox Books? What if we rename the children's department The Shop Around The Corner Children's Books? We could start with the Fox Books around the corner from where your bookstore was and see what the response is.

KATHLEEN: [TEARFULLY] You'd really do that? For me?

JOE: Yes, sweetheart, for you and for your mother.

KATHLEEN: Oh, Joe, that is so sweet of you. I don't know what to say.

JOE: Say 'yes'.

KATHLEEN: Yes, of course, yes. I love you, Joe.

Labels: christmas, comedy, rom-com-faves, romance, Tom Hanks
Internet Movie Database 6.7/10
MetaScore (critics=57, viewers=76)
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=63, viewers=76)
Blu-ray

Armageddon (1998) [PG-13] ***/****

A film review by Roger Ebert, July 1, 1998

Here it is at last, the first 150-minute trailer. Armageddon is cut together like its own highlights. Take almost any 30 seconds at random, and you'd have a TV commercial. The movie is an assault on the eyes, the ears, the brain, common sense and the human desire to be entertained. No matter what they're charging to get in, it's worth more to get out.

The plot covers many of the same bases as the recent Deep Impact, which, compared with Armageddon, belongs on the American Film Institute list. The movie tells a similar story at fast-forward speed, with Bruce Willis as an oil driller who is recruited to lead two teams on an emergency shuttle mission to an asteroid the size of Texas, which is about to crash into Earth and obliterate all life - even bacteria! Their job: Drill an 800-foot hole and stuff a bomb into it, to blow up the asteroid before it kills us. OK, say you do succeed in blowing up an asteroid the size of Texas. What if a piece the size of Dallas is left? Wouldn't that be big enough to destroy life on Earth? What about a piece the size of Austin? Let's face it: Even an object the size of that big Wal-Mart outside Abilene would pretty much clean us out, if you count the parking lot.

Texas is a big state, but as a celestial object, it wouldn't be able to generate much gravity. Yet when the astronauts get to the asteroid, they walk around on it as if the gravity is the same as on Earth. There's no sensation of weightlessness - until it's needed, that is, and then a lunar buggy flies across a jagged canyon, Evel Knievel-style.

The movie begins with a Charlton Heston narration telling us about the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Then we get the masterful title card, 65 Million Years Later. The next scenes show an amateur astronomer spotting the object. We see top-level meetings at the Pentagon and in the White House. We meet Billy Bob Thornton, head of Mission Control in Houston, which apparently functions like a sports bar with a big screen for the fans, but no booze. Then we see ordinary people whose lives will be Changed Forever by the events to come. This stuff is all off the shelf - there's hardly an original idea in the movie.

Armageddon reportedly used the services of nine writers. Why did it need any? The dialogue is either shouted one-liners or romantic drivel. It's gonna blow! is used so many times, I wonder if every single writer used it once, and then sat back from his word processor with a contented smile on his face, another day's work done.

Disaster movies always have little vignettes of everyday life. The dumbest in Armageddon involves two Japanese tourists in a New York taxi. After meteors turn an entire street into a flaming wasteland, the woman complains, I want to go shopping! I hope in Japan that line is redubbed as Nothing can save us but Gamera! Meanwhile, we wade through a romantic subplot involving Liv Tyler and Ben Affleck. Liv plays Bruce Willis' daughter. Ben is Willis' best driller (now, now). Bruce finds Liv in Ben's bunk on an oil platform and chases Ben all over the rig, trying to shoot him. (You would think the crew would be preoccupied by the semi-destruction of Manhattan, but it's never mentioned after it happens.) Helicopters arrive to take Willis to the mainland so he can head up the mission to save mankind, etc., and he insists on using only crews from his own rig - especially Affleck, who is like a son. That means Liv and Ben have a heart-rending parting scene. What is it about cinematographers and Liv Tyler? She is a beautiful young woman, but she's always being photographed while flat on her back, with her brassiere riding up around her chin and lots of wrinkles in her neck from trying to see what some guy is doing. (In this case, Affleck is tickling her navel with animal crackers.) Tyler is obviously a beneficiary of Take Your Daughter to Work Day. She's not only on the oil rig, but she attends training sessions with her dad and her boyfriend, hangs out in Mission Control and walks onto landing strips right next to guys wearing foil suits.

Characters in this movie actually say: I wanted to say… that I'm sorry; We're not leaving them behind!; Guys - the clock is ticking!; and This has turned into a surrealistic nightmare! Steve Buscemi, a crew member who is diagnosed with space dementia, looks at the asteroid's surface and adds this place is like Dr. Seuss' worst nightmare. Quick - which Seuss book is he thinking of? There are several Red Digital Readout scenes, in which bombs tick down to zero. Do bomb designers do that for the convenience of interested onlookers who happen to be standing next to a bomb? There's even a retread of the classic scene where they're trying to disconnect the timer, and they have to decide whether to cut the red wire or the blue wire. The movie has forgotten that this is not a terrorist bomb, but a standard-issue U.S. military bomb, being defused by a military guy (played by William Fichtner) who is on board specifically because he knows about this bomb. A guy like that, the first thing he should know is… red or blue? Armageddon is loud, ugly and fragmented. Action sequences are cut together at bewildering speed out of hundreds of short edits, so that we can't see for sure what's happening, or how, or why. Important special-effects shots (such as the asteroid) have a murkiness of detail, and the movie cuts away before we get a good look. The few dramatic scenes consist of the sonorous recitation of ancient clichés. Only near the end, when every second counts, does the movie slow down: Life on Earth is about to end, but the hero delays saving the planet in order to recite cornball farewell platitudes.

Staggering into the silence of the theater lobby after the ordeal was over, I found a big poster that was fresh off the presses with the quotes of junket blurbsters. It will obliterate your senses! reports David Gillin, who obviously writes autobiographically. It will suck the air right out of your lungs! vows Diane Kaminsky. If it does, consider it a mercy killing.

Labels: action, adventure, disaster, sci-fi, thriller

IMDb 67/100 

MetaScore (critics=42, viewers=64)

RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=53, viewers=76) 

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Two Girls and a Guy (1998) [NC-17] ***

Carla (Heather Graham) and Louise (Natasha Gregson Wagner) are standing outside a New York City building. They discover that they're waiting for the same person, Blake (Robert Downey Jr.). It turns out that he's told them identical stories, and used identical expressions to express his love. Angrily they break into Blake's upstairs loft to wait for him.

Finally Blake arrives, and the two girls confront him; Carla wants to placate and understand him while Louise wants to confront, antagonize and abuse him. Blake tries every possible tactic to avoid being honest with them. He reminds them that he's an actor, and actors lie. He uses his anxiety about his sick mother to win their sympathy. He even fakes a suicide attempt. But gradually the truth emerges. Blake admits that he fell in love with both of them at the same time and just couldn't give either one up. He admits that in the ten months of their relationships, he's had sex with at least ten other women. Carla admits that she's had sex with four other men, and Louise, who is bisexual, admits to having had sex with three women. Carla suggests that maybe they are not capable of monogamy. Louise senses she's likely to be the odd girl out, so she suggests they form a threesome.

Are these three people capable of love or is it all just amoral sex? Is anything they tell each other the truth, or is it all lies and deception? Or is the answer simply that writer-director James Toback is a legendary misogynist (a man who hates women)? 

Labels: comedy, drama, satire
Internet Movie Database
Metacritic 66/100
Tomatometer (critics=52, viewers=42)
Blu-ray

Hope Floats (1998) [PG-13] ***

A film review by Roger Ebert, June 6, 1998.

Hope Floats begins with a talk show where a woman learns that her husband, played by Michael Pare and her best friend are having an affair. Devastated, she flees from Chicago with her young daughter and moves back in with her mother in Smithville, Texas. Everybody in Smithville (and the world) witnessed her public humiliation. Why did you go on that show in the first place? her mother asks. Because I wanted a free makeover, she says. Well, you got one. The victim's name is Birdee Pruitt (Sandra Bullock), and she was the three-time Queen of Corn in Smithville. But she doesn't type and she doesn't compute, and her bitchy former classmate, who runs the local employment agency, tells her, I don't see a listing here for prom queen. Birdee finally gets a job in a photo developing lab, where the owner asks her to make extra prints of any interesting snapshots.

This material could obviously lead in a lot of different directions. It seems most promising as comedy or satire, but no: Hope Floats is a turgid melodrama with the emotional range of a sympathy card.

Consider the cast of characters in Smithville. Birdee is played by Bullock as bewildered by her husband's betrayal (even though he's such a pig that she must have had hints over the years). Birdee's mother, Ramona (Gena Rowlands), is a salt-of-the-earth type who's able to live in a rambling Victorian mansion and keep her husband in a luxurious retirement home, despite having no apparent income. Birdee's daughter Bernice (Mae Whitman) is a little drip who keeps whining that she wants to live with daddy, despite overwhelming evidence that daddy is a cretin. And then there's Justin Matisse (Harry Connick Jr.), the old boyfriend Birdee left behind, who's still in love with her and spends his free time restoring big old homes. (There is no more reliable indicator of a male character's domestic intentions than when he invites the woman of his dreams to touch his newly installed pine.) Hope Floats is one of those screenplays where everything that will happen is instantly obvious, and yet the characters are forced to occupy a state of oblivion, acting as if it's all a mystery to them. It is obvious that Birdee's first husband is a worthless creep. And that Justin and Birdee will fall in love once again. And that Bernice will not go home to live with daddy and his new girlfriend. And that the creeps who are still jealous of the onetime Corn Queen will get their comeuppance. The only real mystery in the movie is how Birdee keeps her job at Snappy Snaps despite apparently ruining every roll of film she attempts to process (the only photo she successfully develops during the entire movie is apparently done by magic realism).

I grow restless when I sense a screenplay following a schedule so faithfully it's like a train conductor with a stopwatch. Consider, for example, the evening of tender romance and passion between Birdee and Justin. What comes next? A fight, of course. There's a grim dinner scene at which everyone stares unhappily at their plates, no doubt thinking they would be having a wonderful time -- if only the screenwriter hadn't required an obligatory emotional slump between the false dawn and the real dawn.

I watch these formulas unfold, and I reflect that the gurus who teach those Hollywood screenwriting classes have a lot to answer for. They claim their formulas are based on analysis of successful movies. But since so many movies have been written according to their formulas, there's a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy going on here. Isn't it at least theoretically possible that after a man and a woman spend an evening in glorious romantic bliss, they could still be glowing the next day? Hope Floats was written by Steven Rogers and directed by Forest Whitaker (Waiting to Exhale). It shows evidence of still containing shreds of earlier drafts. At one point, for example, Birdee accuses her mother of embarrassing her as a child with her road kill hat and freshly skinned purse. Well, it's a good line, and it suggests that Gena Rowlands will be developed as one of the ditzy eccentrics she plays so well, but actually she's pretty sensible in this movie and the line doesn't seem to apply.

There's also the problem that the sweet romantic stuff coexists uneasily with harsher scenes, as when little Bernice discovers her daddy doesn't want her to move back in with him. The whole TV talk show setup, indeed, deals the movie a blow from which it never recovers: No film that starts so weirdly should develop so conventionally. Sandra Bullock seems to sense that in her performance; her character wanders through the whole movie like a person who senses that no matter what Harry Connick thinks, she will always be known as the Corn Queen who got dumped on TV.

Labels: drama, romance
IMDb 60/100
MetaScore (critics=43, viewers=65)
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=45, viewers=78)
Blu-ray

Blogger's comment:
Hope Floats has a formulaic plot, mediocre performances and little chemistry between Sandra Bullock and Harry Connick, Jr. The only redeeming feature of the film is a pair of ideas that are closely intertwined, almost like two sides of the same coin, and are presented so subtly as to be almost subliminal. The first idea is that forcing ourselves to change in order to please someone we love can cause us to become so unrecognizable that we end up hating the other person, and ourselves. The second idea is that turning a hobby we love into our career can twist and warp it so much that it becomes unrecognizable, and we end up hating it, and ourselves. The great lesson hidden in this film is that we must be true to ourselves; we must have a clear vision of who we are and why we are here on Earth.