Big Dreams in Little Hope

Big Dreams in Little Hope suffers from being a low budget film made in the mid-2000s. Quite frankly, this is not a good film to look at. But there’s a positive flip side as well. Big Dreams in Little Hope executes its story well. There’s laughs and emotional moments. It also benefits from casting actress Julie Goldman. Goldman is the standout performer in this sweet but cheap little comedy.

Big Dreams in Little Hope’s leads are two coworkers. The first is Kelly. Kelly is high strung and more professional than her job calls for. She has dreams of being a real journalist. Unfortunately for her, Kelly’s current job sends her to a small town to do bland market research. Along for the ride is Linda, the camera and sound tech. Linda is talkative, perky and occasionally forgetful. Upon reaching their destination of Little Hope, Kelly and Linda find their hotel can’t accommodate them. Instead, after interviewing the small-town residents, Kelly and Linda board at a youth hostel seemingly entirely populated by queer women. Over their trip and faced with some absurd situations, Kelly and Linda both fight and argue but also grow closer.

This is not a love story. The relationship dynamic between Kelly and Linda is co-workers to friends. And that’s probably good. They don’t seem well-suited as romantic partners. I applaud Big Dreams in Little Hope for its focus on friendship. This is a nice buddy movie. Romance isn’t the only important relationship or path for a developing relationship to take.

Despite the lack of romance between its leads, this is still a very lesbian movie. For a 2006 small town, Kelly is surrounded by a surprising amount of lesbians. The IMDb summary even tells me Kelly herself is a lesbian. If she is, it doesn’t come up in the film. Her goals are all career oriented. Linda gets the romantic subplot. She runs into an early fling of hers from their teenage years who’s now married and has an affair with her. Also, all of the women at the hostel seem to be queer. There’s two who are an obnoxious, deeply in love couple who keep Kelly up at night. The manager of the hostel also seems to have an interest in Linda. Much as the most important relationship here is platonic, this is still an incredibly sapphic movie. Any actual romance in the film is reserved for female couples.

Big Dreams in Little Hope has a pretty solid comedy screenplay. The story is cliche but the jokes have something to say. There’s a good variety of humour too. There’s some dark moments, some absurdism, some cultural commentary and some jokes that are just plain stupid. This is a story that not only wants to be funny but has a point of view. When the third act calls for emotional vulnerability, the film pulls it off. And for a story that starts fairly cliche, it subverts several expectations. There isn’t a big “win” for the leads. It’s more of a fuck up. That specific choice helps the film from feeling to saccharine, safe and derivative.

The real standout of the film is Julie Goldman as Linda. I love this character. At first, I thought she was a butch dream girl. But that’s not quite true, she has her fair share of flaws. But she’s pretty dreamy to me. I love her random stream of questions directed at Kelly. And she’s always incredibly nice to Kelly, even when Kelly lashes out. As much as I commend the script for working overall, it always works best when Linda’s onscreen. Goldman is just so likeable. She has such charisma and comedic timing. I’m definitely going to seek out her stand up following this movie. She’s several cuts above the acting you often see in a low budget comedy.

And Big Dreams in Little Hope is absolutely low budget. This is most noticeable in the camera work. The film was definitely shot on mid-2000s’ digital. So, it looks pretty bad. There’s a lot of hand-held work and a lack of colour correction and decent lighting. But it’s more than just visual aspects that suffer from budget. There’s a basic level of time and polish Big Dreams in Little Hope just doesn’t have. The script, while strong, could’ve benefited hugely from another few passes. More budget would also mean more takes, more achievable stylistic ambition and quite simply, more time. Ideally, this would lead to a stronger finished product than the one they achieved.

Overall though, I applaud Big Dreams in Little Hope. With the budget and technology available to them, they still turned out a pretty solid comedy. The character of Linda is a particular standout. This character just made me feel happy. There’s a lot of comedy films that don’t make me feel happy on any level. So, that’s a pretty big point in Big Dreams in Little Hope’s favour.

Overall rating: 5.6/10

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