Movie Review: Hope Floats (1998)

A drama about the consequences of a shattered marriage and going back home, Hope Floats is a dreary descent into doldrums.

In New York City, Birdee (Sandra Bullock) is embarrassed on a trashy daytime television talk show when her supposed best friend Connie (an uncredited Rosanna Arquette) reveals she is having an affair with Birdee's husband Bill (Michael Paré). Birdee packs up her young daughter Bernice (Mae Whitman) and heads back to her tiny hometown of Smithville, Texas, to live with her mother Ramona (Gena Rowlands).

In her high school days Birdee was the local beauty queen. Now after a period of sulking she gets reacquainted with a town that has barely changed, and faces some backlash for her prior haughtiness. She meets wood craftsman Justin Matisse (Harry Connick Jr.) who has had a crush on her since school days, and he initiates a romantic pursuit. Meanwhile young Bernice encounters school bullying issues and hopes her father Bill will come back.

No amount of small town charm, flashes of humour and movie star glamour can save Hope Floats. In one of his few directing excursions, Forest Whitaker delivers a boring and overlong story of a woman coming to terms with the end of her marriage. The film runs out of things to say about 30 minutes in, and once handsome and available Harry Connick Jr. shows up, the ending is predetermined but the tortured Steven Rogers script has to trudge through plenty of nothingness to get there.

And so Whitaker gets busy with a mundane and ultimately pointless subplot about Bernice tangling with the school bully. Birdee plays hard-to-get with Justin to run down the clock when she is not taking turns shouting then hugging with Ramona and Bernice. Birdee's father, confined to a seniors' home and suffering from Alzheimer's disease, is another narrative dead-end.

Sandra Bullock tries hard to save the movie but to no avail, although Whitaker takes time to occasionally capture his star with the light hitting her perfectly ruffled hair just-so for the full glamour effect. Actually filmed in Smithville, the local charm quotient is lower than it should be.

Hope Floats is mopey bloat.

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Movie Review: The DUFF (2015)

A high school teen comedy, The DUFF features a winsome lead but otherwise sticks close to a predictable path.

At an Atlanta-area high school, Bianca (Mae Whitman) is best friends with the more popular and more glamorous Casey (Bianca Santos) and Jess (Skyler Samuels). Bianca is a good student and a fan of old horror movies, but gets tongue-tied in front of her crush, the dishy Toby (Nick Eversman). She is devastated when school jock and neighbour Wesley (Robbie Amell) explains she is perceived as a Designated Ugly Fat Friend (DUFF) to Casey and Jess, the easy-to-approach but undesirable gatekeeper to more attractive friends.

Shocked, Bianca breaks-up her friendships and asks Wesley for advice to recreate her image in return for helping him improve his academic grades. Despite a nasty cyberbullying incident engineered by the vain Madison (Bella Thorne), with Wesley's help Bianca gathers up the courage to talk to Toby, but romantic feelings also start to bubble up between her and Wesley.

The DUFF enjoys edgy and culturally aware dialogue and is saturated with references to the teen obsession with cell phones and social media. But beneath the window dressing is safe adherence to well-worn messages about accepting who you are, rejecting labels and staring down bullies. The narration, the newspaper article as a framing plot device, and the climax at a homecoming dance where issues are resolved are also all disappointingly familiar.

Director Ari Sandel and screenwriter Josh A. Cagan do better at drawing two appealing central characters. With Mae Whitman in fine form, Bianca is a down-to-earth teen comfortable in her own skin until she is not, and her interactions with her school environment carry a refreshing genuineness. It takes a while for Wesley to emerge as the male counterpart, and Cagan does well to round out the usually shallow jock persona, Robbie Amell adding enough role depth to justify Bianca's interest.

The rest of the cast grapple with basic definitions, including Allison Janney as Bianca's mom, a dealing-with-divorce pop psychology seminar presenter.

The good moments feature Bianca processing Wesley's advice to try and reinvent herself and gain confidence talking to boys. In contrast the cyberbullying incident is overcooked to a crisp, and ultimately treated with a touch of worrisome dismissiveness.

In surrendering to the obvious The DUFF sets the bar relatively low, but anyway passes with a decent test score.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

The Movies Of Mae Whitman

All movies starring Mae Whitman and reviewed on the Ace Black Blog are linked below:

Independence Day (1996)

One Fine Day (1996)

Hope Floats (1998)

Nights In Rodanthe (2008)

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)

The Perks Of Being A Wallflower (2012)

The DUFF (2015)

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.
The Index of Movie Stars is here.