Hello readers! I am, once more, back from an extended blogging break. I have been settling into my awesome new job and have barely had time to catch my breath, let alone go to the movies. I apologize for my disappearance.
However, I did find the time to see one movie recently: the pleasant, if unremarkable Hope Springs. The film concerns late middle-age couple, Kay and Arnold, who have been married for over thirty years and now act more like roommates than lovers/friends/spouses. In a desperate bid to save her marriage, Kay takes $4,000 out of her personal savings to pay for a week of intensive couples therapy in the small (and vomit-inducingly cute) town of Hope Springs, Maine. Arnold threatens not to go, then begrudgingly shows up but kicks and screams his entire way through the therapeutic process.
The film has *some* cliched characters. I feel like a blasphemer for writing this, but Meryl Streep feels miscast as the passive-aggressive, submissive (and not in the chicka-chicka-bow-wow way), sexually unadventurous Kay. I am so used to seeing Streep in strong, vital female roles that her performance as mousy, pleasing Kay just seemed off. I think the director wanted an attractive actress in her early 60's, and Streep was the only person he could think of.
Tommy Lee Jones, however, was perfectly cast as Arnold: an old fart curmudgeon who is content to live a life of separate bedrooms and nightly ESPN binges. Arnold is deeply suspicious of therapy and the huge amount of money it costs, and he belittles the process constantly, to the point of deeply hurting Kay, who has invested so much in saving their marriage. Arnold comes off as a close-minded bully, and it's hard to see any possible redemption for such a tightly wound jerk.
One very much *not* cliched character is Dr. Bernard Feld, played compassionately by Steve Carell in a rare dramatic role. Feld is a legitimate expert in marriage counseling and he is never played for laughs. He's a counselor you would actually want to go to in real life, and Carell plays him wonderfully, with kindness that is inherent to Carell's performances, minus the goofiness.
Other reviews have noted that the best scenes in Hope Springs occur between Streep, Jones, and Carell during the therapy sessions. I agree. These scenes show what therapy is really like--with the psychologist leading the couple through their thoughts and feelings, fears and hopes. As therapy often does, this leads to some uncomfortable revelations about oneself and one's partner. Therapy is hard work; you are forced to confront things about yourself that aren't pretty. And Hope Springs shows therapy in a true and sensitive manner, as opposed to a joke or something only for weirdos and crazies.
Where Hope Springs fails is in its cutesy, cliched humor, such as when Kay visits a "Cheers"-like bar where the bartender pours her a free round while commiserating with her marriage trouble. And then there are the scenes of sexual experimentation between Kay and Arnold that are played for laughs but come off as silly. But peppered among these silly scenes are moments of nearly painful intimacy (or lack thereof), such as when Kay and Arnold are given the basic "homework" assignment by Dr. Feld to spend time in each others arms. The two are so used to not touching--even in a non-sexual way--that this assignment is extraordinarily difficult. Even after thirty years of marriage. There but for the grace of God go the rest of us.
Hope Springs is a mix of silly, non-offensive sex jokes about 60-somethings doin' it, a genuine look at marriage counseling, and a somewhat depressing drama about how two people who love each other can become strangers in their own home. It's not the greatest movie ever, but it offers some hard truths--and, yes, hope--about marriage.
3.5 out of 5 stars
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