BEFORE: I was out late working at a screening of "Nosferatu", pretty chill for a vampire movie, but hey, it was a Tuesday in February, that's not peak vampire-movie watching season, at least not for me. The cast didn't bother to show up, probably because zero of them got Oscar noms, so why would they? Instead there was a Q&A after with the director, Robert Eggers, and a bunch of hair, make-up and costume design people, so OK, we know where that movie's Oscar chances really are. I couldn't watch any of the movie except for the last minute, so I know how it ends, but hey, I really already did, so it didn't matter. Anyway that movie links easily to "Renfield" via Nicholas Hoult, so let me just save that information for October and catch up with it then. It's romance season, dammit, not horror movie season!
Oliver Platt carries over from "Letters to Juliet".
Here's tomorrow's schedule for 2/6, Day 6 of TCM's 31 Days of Oscar line-up:
Best Cinematography Winners and Nominees:
7:15 am "The Great Waltz" (1938)
9:15 am "Strangers on a Train" (1951)
11:15 am "The Bad and the Beautiful" (1952)
1:30 pm "Gypsy" (1962)
4:00 pm "Million Dollar Mermaid" (1952)
6:00 pm "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" (1949)
Oscar Worthy Seafarers:
8:00 pm "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1935)
10:30 pm "Captains Courageous" (1937)
12:45 am "Ship of Fools" (1965)
3:30 am "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" (1964)
5:45 am "The Old Man and the Sea" (1958)
I was at 26 seen out of 59, and I've seen 5 out of today's 11: "Strangers on a Train", "Gypsy", "Mutiny on the Bounty", "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" and "The Old Man and the Sea". So that's 31 seen out of 70, and I'm holding at 44%.
THE PLOT: A brokenhearted artist travels to Hope, Vermont, hoping to get on with his life. He starts by drawing faces there. He befriends the cute Mandy. But then his scheming ex shows up and wants him back.
AFTER: This is one of those movies that I lost when I had to give up my old DVD like three weeks ago. There were about 46 movies on that drive that weren't running on any cable channels any more, but I'm going to carry on with my February chain as if nothing went wrong, because every movie is streaming SOMEWHERE, even if it's not legally. Plus I don't want to scrap the whole February chain that I worked so hard on, and it's still a solid chain, it's just missing a few pieces right now. I'll track them all down and then add those movies to the list of things I've seen, but don't have digital copies of, they may come around again, or PBS might show this one on a dull Saturday night, who knows? It's got that kind of indie feel to it.
I did have an opportunity to drop this one, Richard Jenkins is something of a staple in romance movies, so I could have dropped today's movie and gone straight from "Dear John" to tomorrow's film BUT that would mean I'd have to drop "Letters to Juliet" too, and I've skipped it several times already. Nope, that's no good, I have to WATCH movies to get them off the list, there's no other answer, and this is my year for catching up with all the films that I've dropped before. "Ambulance", "The Drop", "The Creator", and coming up, "Kiss My Goodbye" and I think the record-holder for being re-scheduled, "Men, Women & Children". I'll explain why when we get there. I don't care if the remains of the romance chain can't be reassembled into something coherent for next year when I'm done with the topic in March, that's a problem for 2026.
Anyway, "Hope Springs" is a really, really simple romance film. I'm not saying it's a good or bad one (but I'm leaning toward bad) however it is very simple. Create three characters and make a love triangle with one at the focus, who has to decide between the other two. Introduce a bit of confusion or miscommunication which leads that person to reconsider their current relationship and seek out the "other", then you basically just have to kill time until their choice gets made at the end. It's not the formula for EVERY damn romance film, but it kind of is. That's close to being EVERY comedy about love, in a nutshell.
Here we have Colin, a caricature artist from the U.K., he flies to the U.S. and gets intentionally lost in Hope, Vermont, where he starts making caricature portraits of the local residents. Why? Good question - he fled the U.K. because he found out his fiancée, Vera, was getting married to another man. Later we learn this was just a trick on her part, she set up a fake wedding to force Colin to propose, or at least fight for her, or something. I guess she didn't get the memo, proper British men would never do that, they'd just take the bad news (think Basil Fawlty or any other John Cleese character here) and go on with their lives. Chin up, keep calm and carry on, and, umm, why not fly to America for a bit?
When Colin's feeling jet-lagged, the hotel manager sends over a nurse, Mandy, who normally takes care of elderly residents in a group home. But Mandy is young and pretty and free-spirited, and Colin enjoys her company, they do all kind of fun things together, a few even with their clothes on, and he starts to see how moving on from Vera could have its benefits.
But Vera shows up to try to get Colin back - though they never really say how she knew where to look for him, and the U.S. is a big country, after all. But she finds him using her radar or sense of smell and reveals there's no wedding, no other man in her life, she just did that to prove a point. OK, point received, now please go away, because Colin's got this thing going with Mandy and it seems to be working out OK. There's this weird sub-plot where the Mayor of Hope has faked the back-story of the town for some reason, and is leading Vera to believe her Welsh ancestor founded the town, OK, but WHY? How does this benefit the mayor, to have Vera show up and be the "Queen of Hope" at their annual town festival? It makes no sense.
Colin does a great portrait of the town's mayor, and in exchange he gets to reveal to Vera that there's no family connection between her and the founder of the town, I think maybe he was trying to get even with her for her making up that fake wedding, but he doesn't really enjoy breaking the news to her, so that whole plot diversion is really just pointless and a big dud. If it doesn't make sense, please, cut it out from the film or replace it with something else! Anyway, Colin eventually makes his choice between Mandy and Vera and really, it could have gone either way, both women are beautiful and in the habit of taking their clothes off for him, so really, how could he lose? Just pick either the old one or the new one so I can get on with my life, thanks.
See, I told you watching all these romance films in a row was no good for me, mentally. I'm already OVER this common love triangle stuff. Maybe this film just seems very simple because I watched two complex Nicholas Sparks films earlier this week, that's all. But still, this is really basic, basic stuff, and all the added things are just distractions that go nowhere.
Directed by: Mark Herman
Also starring Colin Firth (last seen in "Dorian Gray"), Heather Graham (last seen in "Scream 4"), Minnie Driver (last seen in "The Beekeeper"), Mary Steenburgen (last seen in "Book Club: The Next Chapter"), Frank Collison (last seen in "The Hero"), Mary Black (last seen in "The Layover"), Ken Kramer (last seen in "Antlers"), Chad Faust, Tony Alcantar, Bethoe Shirkoff (last seen in "Head Over Heels"), Alan Giles, Dolores Drake (last seen in "The Professor"), Howard Storey, June B. Wilde (last seen in "Good Luck Chuck"), Susan Bonham, Kathryn Kirkpatrick (last seen in "Frankie & Alice"), Andrew Keilty, William Joseph Firth (last seen in "Bridget Jones's Baby").
RATING: 4 out of 10 rubbers (he meant "erasers", but he's British)
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