Hope Springs (2003)

Short: A depressed artist, Colin (Colin Firth) heads to small-town America to heal his broken heart after his fiancee, Vera (Minnie Driver), leaves him. In Hope, he meets a beautiful young woman, Mandy (Heather Graham).

Hmm. I've been thinking for nearly a day now about how to categorize this movie. It's just sort of flat. Maybe a little stale. I don't know. It never really gets exciting. I took this media theory class, and one of the readings theorized that the tension in a movie/television programme lay in the audience's desire to see the plot continue and the problem to be resolved. I guess you could say that I didn't care one way or the other when I watched this movie. I knew it would be completely resolved by the end of it, so it didn't matter to me how or when it got resolved. In every movie you anticipate the resolution (the movie has to end somehow), but, in this case, there was nothing to compel you to desire it.

A problem that I attribute directly to the writing and directing of Mark Herman. I've never seen anything else that he's done, and, frankly, I don't want to see it now. He basically has the camera sit there, almost as though he's saying, "well, here are some people. Sure is some stuff going on here." It's like watching your friends, only not as interesting or compelling, because you care about your friends.

I don't blame Firth, who is charming, funny, and sexy in this movie, because he does his best to work with what he has been given. Unfortunately, he hasn't been given much.

Also, it's the first movie that I didn't want to hit Graham in the face while watching, but I mostly attribute that to Firth. I bet it's hard to act poorly when he is around.

Oh, and I've always liked Driver. I think she's hilariously catty when she's being cruel.

If I were you, I wouldn't bother with this one. There's no point really. It's based on a book by Charles Webb. I suppose that might be good. Might.