The film opens with the public humiliation of a nice girl called Birdie. Played with Sandra Bullock's everyday charm, Birdie has the misfortune to be married to a nasty germ who is up to no good with her best friend. For reasons unclear to any thinking person, this "friend" decides to confess her misdeeds face to face with Birdie, on a tv talk show. Suitably devastated, Birdie and her daughter run home to Mother in Small Town Texas.

There her humiliation continues. Since everyone saw her private life exposed on national TV, they just keep adding salt to poor Birdie's wound. The frontrunning offender, indeed, is her mother, played by Gena Rowlands. "What did you do?" her mother asks, much to our collective horror. Then mum starts playing matchmaker, choosing Birdie's old high school buddy as a suitable beau. Harry Connick Jr is the beau, he's a builder with bad body odor and the personality of a wet weekend, but that's okay, because he's a man.

Because it would seem that the whole purpose of this movie is to reinforce the theory that women only become complete when they have a man. Doesn't matter which man, or whether the two people have anything in common at all, just as long as she gets one. When Birdie rebels against her mother's matchmaking, she gets the "there aren't many opportunities left, and you had best grab this guy while he's still breathing" routine.

There are various other stupid subplots thrown into the film to take up time, some of which are more successful than others. For example, the antics of Birdie's little nephew are quite appealing, while the school scenes with Birdie's daughter limp badly.

But what makes the movie completely intolerable, is the consistent appearance of the boom microphone at the top of the screen. Maybe the mike is symbolic of the ubiquitous phallus inherent in the script, or an elaborate preview of The Truman Show due to open next week. Whatever the intent, the mike certainly acts as a Brechtian device to break the mood of the movie, disallowing any hope for engagement in the emotional nonsense on the screen.

If you opt to see "Hope Floats" make sure you take along a barf bag. The unchecked pathos of this movie, capped by a tedious and cloying sentimentality, is completely nauseating.