Hope Floats (1998)

After being humiliated on television when her husband's (Michael Pare) affair with her best friend (Rosanna Arquette) is revealed, a wife packs up her daughter (Mae Whitman) and returns to the small Texas town where she was a popular prom queen. Directed by actor turned director Forest Whitaker (WAITING TO EXHALE). Ugh! A sappy and sentimental mixture of romcom and melodramatics. Not even Sandra Bullock's likability can save its turgid narrative. The screenplay has inexplicably made the young daughter played by Whitman a brat whose self pitying behavior destroys any empathy we may have for her. I cringed at a wonderful actress like Gena Rowlands reduced to playing a red neck mother who stuffs dead animals for pleasure and mouths platitudes. I hope she was paid well. With Harry Connick Jr., Kathy Najimy, Dee Hennigan and Cameron Finley.