Sandra Bullock is actually seen cheerleading in a flashback during ''Hope Floats,'' which suits this role and so many others she has played. In her best approximation of America's high school sweetheart since ''While You Were Sleeping,'' Ms. Bullock is cast as a one-time prom queen named Birdee Pruitt who falls on hard times. So Birdee goes back home to sweet little Smithville, Tex., and basks in the small-town wisdom she finds there. Like: ''Maybe you were like the rest of us, 'cept you were ridin' around on flowers made out of toilet paper. That's all.''
''Hope Floats'' begins on a tell-all talk show, where the studiously compassionate host (Kathy Najimy) reveals that Birdee's husband (Michael Pare) has been cheating on her with her best friend (an unbilled Rosanna Arquette). The talk-show mood survives into the film's main story, which takes on such issues as divorce, single motherhood, mother-daughter relationships, the health problems of aging relatives and summoning the courage to date again. The screenplay by Steven Rogers supplies sensitive dialogue to match, as in: ''The harder I tried to be what he wanted me to be, the less I saw in his eyes. And then one day I looked and I was gone.''
After ''Waiting to Exhale,'' Forest Whitaker again directs a film aimed strictly at women, with a pajama-party intimacy that can be disarming when it isn't overdone. Ms. Bullock makes Birdee very sympathetic and gives her a becoming humility to atone for those beauty queen years, which should go a long way toward winning over anyone who can get past the film's title and its slow pace.
''Hope Floats,'' which often resembles a rosy commercial, does indulge in too much awkward slow motion, and in occasional embarrassing romps that are meant to signify family fun. For instance, there's the scene in which Ms. Bullock, with pigtails and a blacked-out front tooth, sings a Motown song with her Mom (Gena Rowlands) using a wooden spoon as a microphone, in an effort to cheer up her lonely young daughter (Mae Whitman, who gives zest to this potentially cloying role).
Terribly cute touches abound, like Birdee's mother's hobby of stuffing dead animals and dressing them up in clothing. (Ms. Rowland's performance is a lot more likably down to earth than that.) Supposedly cutest of all is the aw-shucks hometown hunk who seems to have been waiting for Birdee's return ever since she went away. As played stiffly by Harry Connick Jr., he lacks the dreamboat appeal that the screenplay specifies, but he treats Birdee nicely and has much to recommend him. For instance, he is building an architecturally interesting house out of stained glass and antique Texas pine. And at a local party, he tells Birdee: ''Dancin's just a conversation between two people. Talk to me.''
Eased along by slow ballads on the soundtrack and given a sunlit prettiness by Caleb Deschanel's cinematography (which leaves overhead microphones starkly visible in a couple of scenes), ''Hope Floats'' has a peaceful, nostalgic mood that echoes the far more compelling romanticism of ''The Horse Whisperer.'' In this more mundane version, the catch phrases are ''my cup runneth over'' and (whenever Ms. Bullock tucks her screen daughter into bed) ''snug as a bug in a rug.''
HOPE FLOATS
Directed by Forest Whitaker; written by Steven Rogers; director of photography, Caleb Deschanel; edited by Richard Chew; music by Dave Grusin; production designer, Larry Fulton; produced by Lynda Obst; released by 20th Century Fox. Running time: 112 minutes. This film is rated PG-13.
WITH: Sandra Bullock (Birdee Pruitt), Harry Connick Jr. (Justin Matisse), Gena Rowlands (Ramona Calvert), Mae Whitman (Bernice Pruitt), Michael Pare (Bill Pruitt), Kathy Najimy (Toni Post) and Rosanna Arquette (Friend).
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