Hope Springs Movie Review

Not to be confused with Hope Floats, the Hope in Hope Springs is a small town, and the springs in question is a noun.

Hope Springs brings us the direct-to-video story of a U.K. artist (Colin Firth), who recently has been dumped by stuffy fiancee Minnie Driver. He jets to the U.S. to seek solace in the town of Hope, promptly finding the much different, free-spirited Heather Graham as his new muse. It's only a matter of time before Minnie's back in the picture... who will he end up with?

If you don't know the answer to this, you haven't seen many movies.

Predictability aside, Hope Springs is one hell of a bad movie. Firth's first date with Graham sees her downing half a bottle of liquor in the car en route to their date. She forces Firth to drive them back to his motel, then strips naked and jumps on the bed. Life is like that, I guess, but not in any proto-reality I'm familiar with. Firth is watchable, though he's playing the usual downtrodden Englishman we've seen in umpteen films to date, but the rest of the actors are fairly appalling. Ultimately it's the wholly unbelievable -- and frankly, impossible -- story that makes Hope Springs fail to work in virtually every scene. Not only do we not care who Firth ends up with, we don't really care if he ends up with anyone at all. By the end, I was hoping he'd drown in the springs.

Director Mark Herman (Little Voice) does as well as expected considering the source material (then again, he wrote the screenplay too), but frankly I'm starting to think he should have stayed a little closer to home.

Based on the novel New Cardiff.

The DVD includes a making-of featurette.

"Where's the plot?"