The opening scene of Hope Floats (Twentieth Century Fox) kills me, because it hints at what this bland romantic fantasy might have been. Birdee Pruitt (Sandra Bullock), former high school beauty queen of Smithville, Tex., and current well-groomed wife and mother, appears on a Sally Jessy Raphael-style talk show thinking that she's been chosen to receive a makeover. Instead, the host (Kathy Najimy) brings on Birdee's best friend, Connie (Rosanna Arquette) with some hot news: Connie's having an affair with Birdee's husband, and she thought television would be the best way to tell her side of the love story. The TV audience clucks excitedly. Najimy, wielding her emcee's mike with perfect smarminess, nods in phony commiseration. Arquette juts out her chin in a mask of defensive entitlement. What a promising setup! What a great opportunity to expand on the shelf life of beauty, the treacheries that threaten friendships, the warped appetite for media exposure that encourages people to display their worst selves, shamelessly!
Hope sinks deeper than Speed 2, however, the minute Najimy and Arquette exit and Bullock's story really begins. Tremulous as a weed in the wind, the wronged woman packs up her empathic daughter (Mae Whitman) and returns home to her own mother (Gena Rowlands). And wouldn't you know, Mom is one of those eccentric, bursting-with-life-force characters who passes for charming on the screen but who would be intolerable in real life. Birdee mopes, she pines for her man, she reminisces mournfully about the old days when she was a sassy neighborhood star while not displaying a lick of proof that she was ever anything but the wet washcloth she is now. And yet she inspires the devotion of a hometown boy (Harry Connick Jr.) from whom she had previously withheld the time of day, but with whom she is obviously meant to be, if only she'd wake up and smell the grits.
The pond is so shallow in this wan romance that there's no room for anything to float. Bullock never goes beyond the approximation of bruised, friendly prettiness that has gotten her this far as a likable if unfocused star. And director Forest Whitaker, who showed a nice touch with ''women's drama'' in Waiting to Exhale, substitutes cute business for emotional content. Poor, wonderful Rowlands is finally reduced to lip-synching and dancing hammily to the Temptations' ''I Can't Get Next to You'' to demonstrate her joie de vivre. But don't be deceived: She's drowning, not waving, deep in the heart of Texas. C-
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