A movie about marriage counseling! Why didn’t you tell me? Can we wait overnight for tickets? Pleeeeeeeeease? Now, kids, you already got your treat this week; did we not have a full day at church and the retirement home yesterday?
Kay (Meryl Streep) ain’t pleased. But it’s a dull ain’t pleased, not an volatile one. She and Arnold (Tommy Lee Jones) just don’t connect anymore. After 31 years of marriage, they don’t share a bed and they don’t share affection. Their lives are routine and dull. It’s scarier than it sounds. This happens to, quite literally, millions of couples. Do you fight or resign? I imagine inclination for resignation far outweighs inclination for battle.
After weighing several options, Kay passive-aggressively bullies Arnold into therapy. We don’t feel sorry for him; their lives are much more built around his routine than hers. Therapy requires an expensive vacation to Maine from their Omaha home (Omahome?), a fact never lost on Arnold. Most of what follows is spent on couches while fielding questions from a very underplayed Steve Carell as Dr. Feld, medicine woman, er, marriage counselor.
Hope Springs is the best ad widescreen has ever had. Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones are both very accomplished performers and you’ll want to see one’s reaction when the other talks. The couch in the counseling office provides a perfect metaphor for the distance between the couple and as they differ, at first the two pick opposite ends of the same piece of furniture with a big gap in between. As their feelings evolve, the gap dissolves. There is a tendency in video conversion to make this a fullscreen movie – show her face, then his, then hers again. Such would be a HUGE mistake. The irony? The people most likely to purchase Hope Springs will not know the difference between the two and will invariably select full screen. *slaps forehead*
Springs hops awry with its devotion to the sensational. The screenplay has taken the very real drift between long-time companions and reduced all problems to a lack of sexual intimacy. I’m sure this sells more tickets and seeing Oscar winners squirm is all good fun, but the analysis is kind of shallow. This also, hence, presents itself as a tell-not-show film. That’s fine, so long as you cross the “can’t I just see this on TV?” threshold. But it’s not even much of a tell film at that. When Dr. Feld quizzes each partner on sexual fantasies, Kay has nothing to share. Nothing. She’s been married for 31 years and never had a sexual fantasy? Really? Ok, excuse me while I cram your entire target audience into this box. Mmmmph, rrrrgh, blaarghh. There ya’ go.
The point to this directive choice is Kay and Arnold are deliberately painted with broad strokes so to appeal to all aging couples. It works, barely, 
because Streep and Jones are Grade A performers. Take anything less and you’ve got two old folks giving weak answers to mildly titillating questions. You want to see that? Just go ask some random grandparents when they last had sex.
Unhappy marriage?
Can you get him to Hope Springs?
Then all is not lost
Rated PG-13, 100 Minutes
D: David Frankel
W: Vanessa Taylor
Genre: Finding the *magic* again
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Late-middle aged women
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Newlyweds
