Do all the tracks in a movie soundtrack have to sound exactly alike? No, but there must be a level of consistency. Enough to give the project its own identity. In "Hope Springs", the song selection is all over the place! The movie starts by showing us an artist named Colin Ware who, after a bad break-up, travels to a small town where he meets a free-spirited woman named Mandy. That's right: A story with a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. I thought that I was going to hate it, but I ended up being pleasantly surprised. You see, everything that we expect from a story like this happens within the first 30 minutes, which gives room for the relationship to grow more naturally. There's even a scene halfway through where Mandy says "I thought we had something special, but now I'm afraid that you've been using me. A way for you to take your mind off what happened to you back home". Keep in mind that this came out in 2003, years before the flaws of this trope became common knowledge. The consendation of the formula made me wonder where the story would go. Unfortunately, the rest of the running time still uses a lot of clichés. Heather Graham's performance is weak and a lot of the jokes fall flat. In fact, there's a scene where the fire alarm goes off at a hotel just when a certain character has taken their clothes off. All the guests go outside and said character is still in their underwear. Of course that escaping from danger is more important than putting one's clothes back on, but why doesn't this person have a towel on? Don't they care about being exposed in public? Don't they care about being soaking wet in the middle of the night? Even if you can convince me that this is part of their characterization, why doesn't anyone offer a jacket or something?

 

4/10