It’s never a good sign when the best five minutes of a movie are the first five minutes — when it’s all downhill from the first scene.

“Hope Floats,” the latest star vehicle for Sandra Bullock, starts off with promise but quickly sinks into forced sentimentality and extreme tedium.

It’s the type of movie that requires viewers to bring one of those watches with the light-up faces so they won’t suffer eye strain as they repeatedly check the time before the closing credits finally roll.

The movie begins on the set of a television talk show whose host falls somewhere between Rikki Lake and Jerry Springer on the sleaze scale. Bullock stars as Birdee, a woman who thinks she is on the talk show for a free make-over.

Instead, Birdee’s there to be confronted by her best friend, who has been having a year-long affair with Birdee’s husband.

This early scene, and the few which follow, hint at what “Hope Floats” could have been. Dark comedy potential that is never realized, like the scene of Birdee shredding her husband’s shirts and sheets with a big knife while she talks to her mother on the phone.

Even a light comedy would have been better than the pointless, over-emotional drama it becomes. The whole movie ends up with the sappy feel of a Hallmark Hall of Fame made-for-TV melodrama. It’s the kind of schmaltzy fare that is usually put on after “Touched By An Angel.”

After appearing on the talk show and being humiliated in front of the nation, Birdee leaves Chicago with her daughter and heads for home and mom. In this case, home is Smithville, Texas, and mom is one of those incredibly annoying super-positive people.

You know the kind of person I mean. People who have never had a negative thought in their lives. People who always look on the bright side. People so positively life affirming every moment of every day that you just want to choke them to death.

Birdee’s romantic interest in the movie is Harry Connick, Jr. Here, he’s stuck in the role of Justin, an “aw-shucks” kind of guy who has had a crush on Birdee since high school.

I’ve liked Connick’s performances in other movies, but he isn’t given much to work with here. But none of the actors are given much to work with, really. Bullock does a passable job as Birdee, but I think she needs to stick to less dramatic roles.

None of the characters have much depth, nor are they developed well. “Hope Floats” is guilty of character development by personality quirk. Birdee’s mom, for example, is supposed to be an eccentric kind of lady, demonstrated by her hobby of stuffing dead animals, dressing them up and displaying them in funny poses.

This lack of character depth kept me from caring about what happened to any of these people. All of what were supposed to be deeply touching, emotional moments didn’t ring true. They all seemed false, contrived and unbelievable.

There doesn’t seem to be much of a point to the movie, much less a concrete plot. Worse yet, every story development is completely obvious from the beginning. I hate movies where I know exactly what is going to happen long before the characters have a clue.

There were no surprises, nothing I didn’t see coming a mile away. Gee, do you think Birdee and Justin will get together? Will Bernice really go back to Chicago with her dad? Who cares? I certainly didn’t.

There are moments throughout the movie that do hint at what “Hope Floats” could have been, instead of this extremely boring and pointless drama. It could have been a movie I enjoyed. Instead, this is two hours of my life that I want back.

2 stars out of five

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Mike Milik is a senior in advertising from West Des Moines.