Delayed Reaction: Hope Floats

What I Guessed It Was About: Sandra Bullock starts dating Harry Connick Jr. And...uh...it's not a very helpful title for making guesses.

How I Came Into It: This is one of the last Sandra Bullock RomComs I have left. By now, I know the kind of beats to expect. I like Bullock in this phase of her career though. As the above section suggests, I knew very little about this particular movie going in. It wasn't going to take much for me to like it.

Why I Saw It: (Club 50) I need to get this out of the way first. Mae Whitman is way more prolific than I ever imagined. She was never a top billed child actor, so I never noticed how ubiquitous she was (When a Man Loves a Woman, ID4, Hope Floats, etc.). She was a great child actress. The beginning of the movie is perfectly 90's and I love the recurring joke of everyone in town telling Bullock's character that they saw her on TV, like that was something she wanted to know. RomComs needs more dark humor like that.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: I promise you, it will be hard as hell to keep this separate from Something to Talk About over time in my head. In general, it's a lesser Bullock RomCom. I'm not sure how much I bought Bullock being a bitch in high school. With the movie beginning as it does, she starts off too sympathetic and I didn't get enough flashes of who she was in high school to buy how much her old classmates didn't like her.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend