After the critical and financial failures of In Love and War and Speed 2: Cruise Control, it was time for a career make-over for Sandra Bullock, or, at least, a much better received film. Sandra didn’t follow up those two movies with another big action movie or end-of-the-year awards-bait production; instead, she made the surprise 1998 hit film Hope Floats. And while it’s not a great film, Hope Floats offered Sandra her first meaty dramatic role.
The Low-key Drama Hope Floats Surprisingly Outgrossed the Summer Tent-pole Speed 2 Nationwide
Coming on board as executive producer for the first time in her long career, Sandra learned the ropes of motion picture producing by working with Hope Floats’ producer Lynda Obst. After the disaster that was Speed 2: Cruise Control, Sandra wanted, literally, more control over her projects. In an interview on the set of Hope Floats in 1997, Sandra stated that she was saying ‘yes’ to too many projects she didn’t believe in, and that she would now be making one movie a year, maybe. (Of course that wasn’t the case; she would make seven films over the next three years.) Hope Floats was a project she obviously believed in, because she signed on to Speed 2 partly to ensure that Twentieth Century Fox would allow her to make the more personal drama. Probably the most surprising statistic is that Speed 2 earned 48.6 million nationwide, while Hope Floats made 60; nobody in 1997 would have predicted that!
Hope Floats is a frustration movie because there are really effective moments surrounded by such a low-key story that it’s hard at times to care about the outcome. The title itself is extremely hokey, and a lot of the film, directed by the better-actor-than-director Forrest Whitaker, is way too schmaltzy for its own good. The most maudlin moments occur when Whitaker slow-mo’s certain shots so that we as an audience can realize what’s happening on screen is very dramatic. The second-to-last scene, involving Sandra discovering a picture of Harry Connick Jr. and walking up to him on the street outside, is particularly stupid, and maybe the dumbest scene in the whole movie.
The Film's Opening Scene is Tonally Different From the Rest of the Movie
The most interesting aspect to Hope Floats is its opening few minutes, which is tonally different than the rest of the movie. We’re introduced to Sandra’s Birdee character at a lame Jerry Springer-like talk show hosted by the where-the-hell-did-she-go Kathy Najimy. Birdee learns on the show that her high-school-sweetheart husband has been cheating on her for over a year with her best friend (a well cast Rosanna Arquette) and that he doesn’t love her anymore. This opening makes the movie feel like it’s going to be a comedy in the vein of Miss Congeniality or The Proposal, with maybe a revenge plot following Birdee’s talk show appearance. But the rest of the movie finds Birdee trying to rediscover herself and make a new life for her and her daughter (Mae Whitman, by far the film’s MVP), with little in the way of high-stakes comedy. It’s unusual to say the least; it’s like if While You Were Sleeping opened with a scene of Sandra not being chosen on The Dating Game, or if Crash opened with Sandra screaming at a bunch of black guys on an episode of Maury. The purpose of the opening scene is to reveal to Birdee’s character that her husband’s an adulterer. There were fifty other ways to get that idea across; this way shouldn’t have been one of them.
The rest of the movie has its ups-and-downs. Sandra is surrounded by a terrific supporting cast, including Gena Rowlands and Mae Whitman, as well as a who’s-who of character actors. While the relationship plot involving Harry Connick Jr takes up way too much screen-time and doesn’t really go anywhere, the storylines involving Sandra’s relationship with her mother and with her daughter feel authentic and involving, mostly due to the three performances. Sandra gets more than a couple great scenes in this film; Hope Floats was the first of her movies to really show her dramatic range. The scene where Sandra lashes out at her daughter on the staircase comes to mind, as does the scene in the bathroom, where she drunkenly cowers over a toilet and cries to her mom that she misses her husband, and that she’s lost without him.
While it's Not Considered a Classic By Any Means, Hope Floats Remains a Good Late 90's Drama
Hope Floats hasn’t really gained much of a following in the thirteen and a half years since it’s been released; even Sandra’s fans would probably pick Speed, While You Were Sleeping, and Miss Congeniality as her best films made in the year 2000 and prior. And, ugh, there are arguably more fans of the abysmal Practical Magic, made the same year, than of Hope Floats. But while it’s an imperfect, sometimes overly sentimental film, Hope Floats is an important stepping stone in the career of Sandra Bullock, not just as an actress, but as a producer as well.
- BEST SCENE: Sandra cries drunkenly to Gena Rowlands about missing her husband
- BEST LINE: “Childhood is what you spend the rest of your life trying to overcome.”
- NEXT UP: Sandra and Nicole Kidman play sisterly witches in Practical Magic
