Hope Springs

Directed by Mark Herman, Hope Springs follows Colin Firth’s Colin Ware as he arrives in a small town in the aftermath of a devastating breakup and is subsequently shaken out of his funk by the affable, eccentric townspeople (including Heather Graham’s manic-pixie-dream-girl love interest, Mandy). It’s familiar territory that’s employed to watchable yet entirely forgettable effect by Herman, as the filmmaker, working from his own screenplay, delivers a decent-enough romcom that benefits from Firth’s predictably engaging, charming performance and his character’s obvious chemistry with the various periphery characters. (There is, for example, a couple of hotel proprietors, played by Mary Steenburgen and Frank Collison, that provide the picture with most of its laughs.) It’s disappointing to note, then, that Hope Springs, perhaps inevitably, begins to demonstrably run out of steam as it passes the halfway mark, with the increasingly uninvolving atmosphere compounded by a final third that indulges in many of the genre’s worst clichés and conventions (including a fake break-up that just feels endless). The final result is a piece of work that never quite becomes as entertaining or absorbing as one might’ve anticipated (and hoped), which is too bad, ultimately, given that the film does contain a raft of agreeable performances that effectively elevate the proceedings from time to time.

** out of ****