The latest weepy chick flick from actor-director Forest Whitaker (_Waiting_to_Exhale_) demonstrates all too well the limitations of good acting. Sandra Bullock, Harry Connick Jr., Gena Rowlands, and young Mae Whitman turn in strong performances, but they can't make Steven Rogers's soggy script float (yeah, bad pun) above the level of made-for-TV movie. After being dumped by her husband (Michael Pare) on a national TV talk show (by far the film's most entertaining scene) Birdee Pruitt (a radiant Bullock) and her daughter Bernice (Whitman) moves back in with her taxidermist mother (Rowlands) in backwater Smithville, Texas.

>From this point on, everything belongs on the small screen. Birdee is aggressively wooed by a nice guy (Connick) who's had a crush on her since high school, but she and especially Bernice can't overcome the hope that her hubby will come back to her. There is also the obligatory disease-stricken older relative: in this case, Birdee's father, who's been staying in a rest home since having a stroke and coming down with Alzheimer's. I'm not spoiling anything by revealing Birdee eventually stops feeling sorry for herself and starts living again, but, of course, not before a number of tears are shed, people lovingly embrace, and the de rigueur death of a loved one. Nothing spells dull and saccharine quite like the two dreaded Hs--hugs and healing.