Hope Springs
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Movie Reviews of Hope Springs
Movie Review: A Pleasent Movie!
Summary: 3 Stars
Okay, first off this movie is not going to scream oscar winner but it's still a fun quirky movie with likeable characters. Yes, I'm a huge Colin Firth fan and no that's not why I'm not jumping on the bandwagon of bad reviews. Yes, the movie is a romantic comedy but I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that it's predictable. Perhaps because I've not read the book that this movie was based on I did not come in with any kind of expectations. Who knows. I do recommend this movie as a nice way to spend a few hours.Movie Review: Colin Fan!!
Summary: 3 Stars
Yes, the movie was rather lame and disjointed, but seeing Colin Firth throughout the whole movie was worth it!! I have been crazy about Colin Firth ever since I saw Pride and Prejudice. Colin's role as Mr. Darcy definitely has more artisitic quality, but, hey, I watched Hope Springs for aesthetic reasons!! If you want to spend an hour and half watching an extremely handsome, witty man -- rent the movie!!Movie Review: An okay movie...
Summary: 3 Stars
but not really a Colin Firth movie. A cute chick flick but could have been better. One mans quest to get over the woman who dumps him. The ending is VERY satisfying.Movie Review: What an utterly boring movie from start to finish
Summary: 2 Stars
I watched this movie because it has Colin Firth, whom I fondly remember as being the first Mr. Darcy in a production of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" who ever managed to make the transition from snob to heartthrob over the course of the story. Firth made a trio of pretty good movies in 2003, from the cute "What a Girl Wants," to the sublime "Girl with a Pearl Earring," and the romantic "Love Actually." That same year he made "Hope Springs," and if you are wondering why you did not hear much about this film it is because most people who see it are not going to want to admit the fact.The story, such as it is, finds Colin Ware (Fifth), an English artist who was jilted by his girlfriend deciding for reasons that passeth understanding to flee to the small town of Hope, Vermont. There he will draw charcoal portraits of the men and women there while he forgets her. Helping Colin with this quest is Mandy (Heather Graham), who is a bit strange and is drawn to jump around naked in front of him. Just as Colin becomes comfortable with Mandy, his ex-girlfriend Vera (Minnie Driver) arrives in town. Apparently Colin was not really jilted, so now we have a love triangle where the only problem is that we have no real reason to have a voting interest in any of the characters.
What makes this so remarkable is that "Hope Springs" is based on the novel "New Cardiff" by Charles Webb, who wrote the novel "The Graduate." It has been over three decades since the celebrated film version of "The Graduate" was produced and the only other novel of Webb's to make it to the screen was the 1971 bomb "The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker." But then Hollywood is full of stories of people for whom lightning did not strike twice and with this film Webb threatens to be the poster boy for such unfortunate souls.
The film is set in a Vermont town that has the most boring collection of New England eccentrics we have probably ever seen on screen. Both Mary Steenburgen and Oliver Platt are wasted in supporting roles, but then the same can be said for Firth, Graham and Driver. The only reason to like Colin the character is because we like Colin the actor, since there is nothing to warrant our attraction to the character in this film beyond his sense of befuddlement. When the best jokes in a film have to do with Catharine Zeta-Jones and smoking on a golf course, you know things are in bad shape. When you get to the point where you are supposed to get teary eyed and you yawn instead, you know this film can sink no lower. It is not so much that this is a bad film as it is that it is just not good.
Will Colin choose Mandy or Vera? I do not care and cannot think of much reason for anybody else to care as well. Maybe this film would have done better if it had a cast of nobodies instead of recognizable names who squander the good will they have built up in other films. For example, I have seen Graham do a nude scene in another film, so when she does one in which we never really see anything it just seems strange, which does set the town for the rest of this disjointed film. When Driver shows up it is impossible to believe that she and Firth ever had any chemistry. It is a good thing that Firth had those other films in the can by the time this one was released. If you have three pretty good films in one year that is pretty good, even if there is a bomb like this in the mix.
The bottom line is that I saw this movie so that you do not have to. If you like Colin Firth then I would tell you to go check out "Girl with a Pearl Earring," because that is probably the one you missed given its box office receipts and it is a gem of a film. This one is just a disappointing, boring mess.
Movie Review: Stars Don't Always Shine
Summary: 2 Stars
Generally, I think that actors can make a film worth watching even when the script isn't that good. A good performance can make an otherwise unremarkable script seem better than it is. But actors like Colin Firth, an actor with a quiet, almost passive acting style, cannot hope to compete with this stultifying, cloying, saccharine screenplay. This movie goes back and forth on a linear timeline for virtually the entire 92 minutes, creating the feeling that there has been no passage of time at all. It's suffocating, a static, energy-sapping, eyelid-drooping tour of duty through Mark Herman's drifting career - as is the cinematography which frames every scene so tight and close that you feel like leaving the room yourself just to get some air.
Besides a limp storyline, the dialogue is frightfully bad, barely a laugh anywhere. That the resolution of the film, Colin Firth carrying the usually bounteous Heather Graham - reduced here to some kind of carefully-wrapped, de-sexed, small-town butter queen - for an inordinate distance for no apparent reason other than to use up some of the movie's endless-seeming running time, is pitiful. The payoff to this awkward forced march? When the two begin stripping off their clothes, apparently as prelude to some even more tame lovemaking, guess what? Firth's character throws out his back. Gales of laughter do not ensue.
An earlier scene, in which the also usually sexy Minnie Driver - whose body is arguably superior to that of Ms. Graham - strips to her negligee, is shot and lit so poorly that we never get the impact of the omnipresent sexuality that is supposed to be driving Mr. Firth throughout the film. Without this sexuality in the two women, Firth's desire is muted, confused, and desultory, his performance has nothing to work off of. Firth is an actor who requires impetus from his surroundings, from other's characters, and from the story itself. He receives none of this and so begins to appear an even more reluctant player than usual.
There is usually one person to blame for something like this: the director who, in this case, is also the writer. Blame them both, and give the actors a pass on this one.