Hope Springs

Mark:

Hope Springs is a little-too-hopeful romantic comedy that struggles to lift the viewer above their day-to-day in the way a good romcom should.

Colin Firth really just can’t crack it in the US. I hope he wasn’t counting on Hope Springs to be his ticket to the big movies. In the same way Minnie Driver can’t get a big budget Hollywood film, and is left with mediocre fare such as this. For Hope Springs is not what it should be, and fails to be what it could.

Whilst at times Hope Springs raises a smile, I just couldn’t love these characters, in the way that I loved Jesse and Celine in Before Sunset or Joel and Clementine in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Heather Graham is relatively charming, but not quite Julie Delpy. Colin Firth is the shy, retiring Colin we have come to expect from his work in British period dramas. A good romcom must make you want the leads to get it right by the end, and in Hope Springs I just didn’t care that much.

I can watch Oliver Platt in just about anything, and I enjoyed his scenes here. But they are too few to make me want to watch this again.

Rating: 1.5 stars
Review by Mark Lavercombe, 6th September 2004
Hoopla Factor: 1.5 stars


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