I'll Have a Baby; Hold the Marriage

Movies: Friends with Kids

Friends with Kids came out earlier this year and was touted as a Bridesmaids cast reunion. Indeed, the film stars Kristen Wiig, Jon Hamm, Maya Rudolph, and Chris O'Dowd (along with Jennifer Westfeldt and Adam Scott as the leads). Unfortunately, Friends with Kids does not have the humor or optimism of Bridesmaids. It's a pretty bland romantic comedy and even a bit of a downer.

Scott and Westfeldt play Jason and Julie: platonic pals since college. The two remain single and childless while their friends pair off and, eventually, have kids. Julie and Jason observe their friends (Wiig and Hamm play one couple and Rudolph and O'Dowd play another) transform from fun-loving, lusty young adults into angry, tired, humorless parents. And they decide that although they want little brats of their own, they don't want to sacrifice the romance and lust for life like their friends did.

So they do the logical thing and decide to have a kid together. They figure that as good buddies, they'll be able to share the duties of child-rearing while still being open to sex and romance with other partners. It's ingenious! Except that, of course, this is a romantic comedy so you know they'll get together in the end.


Friends with Kids had a few nuggets of insight thrown in to an overly-simplistic narrative. At one point, high strung Leslie (Rudolph) discusses Julie and Jason's unusual arrangement with her laid-back hubby, Alex (O'Dowd). Leslie says, "They're doing this to undermine us" and Alex scoffs at the idea that Julie and Jason's life choices have anything to do with Leslie and Alex's marriage. This was a throwaway scene, but I really wish that Westfeldt (who wrote and directed the film) had spent more time exploring it. We're always hearing about the so-called "Mommy Wars"--staying at home vs. working; daycare vs. a nanny; breast vs. bottle. People get so caught up in how others raise their kids (or if others choose to reproduce at all, when, and how often) and probably not because they actually care about the kids' well-being, but because they think other peoples' choices undermine their own. I think women get the brunt of this pressure because, hey, we're the ones with wombs. And we're supposed to all be excellent, perfect mothers. It's enough to make a gal give herself an at-home tubal ligation!

Sadly, the film does not explore parenting pressure at any length or depth. Instead, we get to see Julie and Jason's slow journey toward realizing that each other is "the One" as they raise their child and their terrible, judgy friends fight and make each other miserable.

A couple things that rang false to me: first, the reason that Julie and Jason never got together in the first place is because they weren't attracted to each other. Jason makes it very clear that he is not sexually interested in Julie, which is hurtful to her. But then--BAM--at the very end, Jason decides that, wait a second, he's actually totally hot for Julie! The two can have a romantic relationship now! Yay! Except that in real life if you knew someone for two decades and never had the desire to hook up with them, why would you now? That's not realistic to me. And I guess you could argue that Jason realizes that he loves Julie on a level deeper than surface attraction, but for a movie that is so intently invested in sex and sexual attraction as a core component of a lasting romantic relationship, it seems disingenuous for the movie to throw all that out the window at the end.

Secondly, Julie and Jason seem to base their ideas about marriage and kids on two sets of couples they know: Alex and Leslie, and Ben (Hamm) and Missy (Wiig). That's kind of narrow-minded because, for one thing, Ben and Missy have an obviously terrible (and, it's hinted at, abusive) relationship--kids or no kids. Ben is a complete bully (for what it's worth, Hamm is great at playing handsome bullies) who even makes a "joke" about how he had to rape his wife to get her pregnant. Ha! Ha! ...ha? So the whole having kids thing is irrelevant--these two were clearly headed for divorce court anyway. And then Alex and Leslie's relationship really isn't that dysfunctional. Leslie is just a control freak whose tendencies escalate after she has kids. Alex is laid-back to the point of being passive and just accepts that he gets to have sex like, once a month from now on (this fact horrifies Jason, who apparently didn't know that many couples' sex lives drop off after they have kids). Alex and Leslie actually work together--a little couples therapy and a babysitter once in a while would do them a world of good.

So, my point in breaking all this down is that Julie and Jason make this important life decision based on a rather small sample. They look at their friends and think "kids have ruined their marriages", when actually Ben and Missy's marriage was over before it started, and Alex and Leslie have a pretty normal, if stressed marriage. Kids have little, if nothing, to do with it. So the whole premise of the movie is flawed.

I was disappointed by Friends with Kids because it had the potential to be an interesting exploration of alternative parenting choices, and the pressure society and our friends and loved ones put on us to not only to get married and have kids, but to do it in exactly the "right" way and have a smile on your face while you're doing it. Instead, the movie was tired and cliched. It wasn't horrible. It just didn't live up to its potential.

3 out of 5 stars

When the Bud Becomes too Painful Not to Blossom

Movies: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

I love a good coming of age story. The journey into adulthood/loss of "innocence" is one of those most compelling aspects of human life, and it's something we all go through in one way or another.

That said, a lot of high school movies suck. Possibly because they're often made by greedy, cynical adults who "just don't understand". High school movies tend to cast beautiful, tall, perfect actors in their late twenties as 17 year old kids. These films fall into two camps: movies where teens get wasted and have bizarrely tidy/softly lit sex; or movies where teens' lives are ruined by pregnancy/abortion/drugs/bullying/[insert cliche here] and that misery is played out in a dark avalanche of schadenfreude for the audience's entertainment and self-righteousness.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower, directed and written by Stephen Chbosky (who also wrote the book, which I confess I've never read), is a rare teen movie that transcends its genre. There is still a whiff of "after school special" hovering around it, since the teens in this movie each have a laundry list of pretty awful problems to deal with. But even at its darkest, Wallflower never wallows into preachiness or melodrama. The film remains buoyant, genuine, and--most importantly--humane.  A high school movie where the characters treat each other with kindness and care--but not in a totally phony way? That's a big deal.

In Wallflower, Logan Lerman plays Charlie, a gentle and shy high school freshman. He hopes to make some friends, or at least be allowed to eat lunch with his big sister and her friends, on the first day of school. Alas, the only friend Charlie makes is his English teacher (Paul Rudd), and he eats alone in the cafeteria. But Charlie isn't the terrified, wilting wallflower he initially seems. He gets up the courage to sit with the openly gay class clown--Patrick, played by Ezra Miller, who is pretty freaking awesome--during a football game. Patrick introduces Charlie to his stepsister, Sam (Emma Watson, in a wonderful post-Harry Potter performance). Sam and Patrick decide to take Charlie under their wing, like teen guardian angels. They take Charlie to parties where he experiments with mind-altering substances. They get him into The Rocky Horror Picture Show (which was also a rite of passage for me--albeit in freshman year of college). And Sam gives Charlie his first kiss as if it were a gift. "I want to make sure that the first person who kisses you loves you." she says.

The thing I liked about Wallflower is that it never seems fake or forced. One of the core messages of the movie and book--"We accept the love we think we deserve"--is passed from Charlie's English teacher to Charlie to Sam. And it's the kind of message that could easily be expressed in a sappy, shallow manner. But Chbosky handles this idea--that learning how to love yourself is imperative so you don't let others treat you like crap--sensitively and earnestly. And it's surprisingly deep. Because it's so true; and it's something many adults--let alone kids--struggle with.

I won't go too much into the drama in Wallflower. Much of it is typical teen drama (dating, mating, and relating). But there are some surprisingly dark issues explored. Patrick, Sam, and Charlie struggle with things that have been done to them or ways other people have treated them. All three characters were treated poorly by someone who proclaimed to love them. And they learn over the course of the movie that when someone who says they love you hands you shit on a silver platter, you have the agency to reject that shit. Which, of course, goes back to the theme: "we accept the love we think we deserve." They learn not to accept what other people hand them, while calling it love. Instead, they seek love among each other and in themselves.

My generation traffics in irony. Our motto is "If you can't say something sarcastic, say nothing at all. Especially on Facebook." And when you're surrounded by endless snark and cynicism, you forget how nice earnestness feels once in a while. The Perks of Being a Wallflower is an earnest movie that catches you off guard with it's humanistic approach to high school, and life in general.

4 out of 5 stars

My Fat Friend's Wedding

Movies: Bachelorette

Bachelorette is an enjoyable, if a bit "on the nose", bad-girl movie. The lovechild of Heathers and Bridesmaids, Bachelorette is neither as evil as the former nor as kind as the latter. It's a bitchy movie, but not a nihilistic one.

When I say "on the nose" above, what I mean is that the characters in Bachelorette are broadly drawn stereotypes. There are two significantly overweight characters in the film: Bride-to-be Becky (played by the awesome Rebel Wilson, who played Kristen Wiig's creepy roommate in Bridesmaids), and groomsman Joe. Both of these characters are nice, funny, and caring towards their fellow human beings. The rest of the characters are conventionally good-looking and slim, and with the exception of Becky's nice-guy fiance, Dale, the skinny characters are selfish, immature, stupid, slutty, drug-addicted, and just plain mean.

While it's nice to see an inversion of the "fat guy gets skinny chick" stereotype, with plus-size (but otherwise conventionally good-looking) Becky getting fit, attractive Dale, it's also just plain dumb the way these characters line up perfectly as heroes and villains. Becky is the first of a group of high school friends, the "B-faces", to get engaged. Her fellow B-faces (why do high school girl groups always have names? I'm pretty sure there were no "Plastics" or "Heathers" at my high school) include slutty coke-fiend Jenna (Lizzy Kaplan), unbelievably stupid Katie (Isla Fisher), and Type-A mean girl Regan (Kirsten Dunst, walking the line between loyal friend and complete bitch nicely). Regan is the first to find out about Becky's engagement and calls her friends expressing her confounded feelings that the fat friend, known as "Pig face" in high school, is the first to get married!

OH MY GOD YOU GUYS. FAT GIRLS GET MARRIED!!?? My mind is blown, seriously. Especially since, you know, overweight people make up the majority of Americans and like, 90% of Americans marry at least once in their lifetime. But ok, ok. Let's take this movie at face-value. Becky is the fat, and also awesome friend, and she is achieving a traditional, heterosexual rite of passage before her skinny, terrible friends, which is like TOTALLY CRAY-CRAY AMIRITE?!

Jenna, Katie, and Regan come together as bridesmaids of Becky. Regan is the maid of honor, which is smart on Becky's part because Regan is basically a more glamorous version of Tracy Flick from Election. Regan may be a bitch, but she gets. shit. done. I want a maid of honor like her if I ever get married.

During a drug/alcohol-fueled pre-wedding moment of tomfoolery, these three geniuses manage to tear Becky's plus-size wedding dress. The rest of the movie revolves around them trying desperately, in the middle of the night, to repair and clean the dress. Meanwhile, the gals continually run into the groomsmen, who are out for a night on the town with hapless Dale, the nice guy groom who doesn't want to go to a strip club (awww...but also, yeah right).

I won't go into details about what happens, but I will say that Regan redeems herself by actually being there for Becky minutes before she has to walk down the isle. Becky falters for a moment, whispering, "My mom thinks I'm too fat for [Dale]." Regan, who spent much of the movie mocking Becky's weight, looks Becky in the eye and says "Becky. Fuck everyone."

Fuck everyone. 

Wow. Obviously, you can't use "fuck everyone" as your day-to-day mantra because everyone would say "fuck you too" back and you'd have no friends. But at a moment like this, when it's time to woman-up, put on the big-girl panties, "fuck everyone" is exactly what I would want a friend to say to me. This is why Regan manages at the last minute to transcend the hero/villain dichotomy of Bachelorette. Sure, Regan is terrible in a lot of ways, but she still saves to day--with her sheer iron will and dominance. Some people in the movie refer to her as a psychopath. But I think she's just smart.

Bachelorette is hardly a paradigm-shifting film. The characters can be pretty one-dimensional, particularly Isla Fisher's brain-dead portrayal of Katie (between Ansel in Killer Joe and Freddie in The Master, dumb people are having a moment in film). And it really annoyed me, but also kind of cracked me up how, in the first scene, Regan and Becky are having lunch together and Regan orders a Cobb salad, "hold the chicken, bacon, and avocado" and Becky orders a burger and fries, with cheesecake for desert. I wonder if the director intended for them to order such eye-rollingly obvious "skinny" and "fat" people food. It's actually kind of genius how brazen some of the stereotypes were.

Bachelorette is no Bridesmaids, but it's also smarter and funnier than your average chick flick.

3.75 out of 5 stars

Hot Talk

Movies: For a Good Time, Call

For a Good Time, Call is bubbly, happy little movie that had me leaving the theatre with a smile on my face. It's not going to win any awards, but it will probably get some laughs and maybe even tug a few heartstrings.

On its surface, For a Good Time, Call is a raunchy sex comedy about two women in their late twenties who start a phone sex business to make some extra dough in a crappy economy. But what the movie is really about is friendship; specifically, it's about how friendship in and of itself can be a sort of love affair.

Katie (played by Ari Graynor, a lady so cute that she strongly tests my heterosexuality) and Lauren (Lauren Miller, also the screenwriter) don't start out as friends. The met briefly in college, but due to a mishap involving a cup of urine in a moving car, they had a falling out and never spoke again...until 10 years later when their guy pal introduces them since they are both in desperate need of a roommate.



Begrudingly, they move in together. When prim Lauren hears lusty, deep-voiced Katie constantly talking dirty on the phone, she asks what's up. Katie admits that she makes extra money on the side as a phone sex operator. Lauren's response? To make it into a business. The two ladies coin their sex talk business "1-800-MMM-HMMM" and the cash (and heavy breathing) starts rolling in.

But here is where the movie goes from a good-natured sex romp (with cameos by Kevin Smith and Seth Rogen as horny customers) into something more. During a "threesome" scenario, a customer asks Katie and Lauren to look at each other and describe what they see. Instead of the typical lewd talk, a tightly-framed camera focuses on each actress while they say things like "She's the most honest person I've ever known." and "She's so beautiful. Her hair is perfect." Katie and Lauren have gone from vaguely hating each other to what can aptly be called a "homoromantic" relationship. And the best part is: they never make out!

Don't get me wrong--I would not be adverse to seeing them make out. It's just that the For a Good Time, Call doesn't exploit Katie and Lauren's friendship as an excuse to show some unrealistic girl-on-girl (for a hetero male gaze). I'm a woman who tends to have female friends. I've never made out with any of my female friends...but have I told some of them that I loved them? Yes. And I meant it.

Likewise, For a Good Time, Call shows female friendship as love, not backstabbing and bitchery. Sure, Lauren and Katie have some serious ups and downs, but when it comes down to it, they genuinely care about each other and want each other to be happy. This is what real friendship is--when you accept someone's flaws and want the best for them. When you can be yourself around them and know that they won't judge you (much...). Without that comfort, honesty, and caring--why bother?

For a Good Time, Call also handles sexuality in a really positive way. It takes place in a world where women own vibrators, and that is considered normal. There's also a subplot where a character reveals a secret about her sexuality that is indeed unusual, but it's treated as not a big deal. The film has an attitude of "I'm OK, you're OK" when it comes to sex. It's refreshing.

Even though I don't run a phone sex hotline, I felt like For a Good Time, Call really spoke my language. The characters were friendly and relatable. Unlike other female-led comedies such as Clueless and Mean Girls, this movie is populated with people I'd actually want to be friends with. Although clearly feminist and sex-positive, For a Good Time, Call is also just plain fun.

4 out of 5 stars

Cult of Personality

Movies: The Master

Paul Thomas Anderson directs horror movies in which no ghosts, ghouls, werewolves, or vampires appear. Instead, the monster haunting his films is humanity itself. When I saw Boogie Nights for the first time in high school, it disturbed me so much that I vowed never to watch it again. However, when a friend in college proclaimed his love of the scene in BN where Alfred Molina uses a blowtorch to smoke crack, I gave the film a second chance (that scene is pretty classic, btw). I was still disturbed, but I was older and more able to feel uncomfortable while also acknowledging greatness in movies, books, and art.

Years later, P.T. Anderson's movies still disturb me, but I am up for the challenge. His 2007 film, There Will Be Blood, is a true masterpiece and a total gut-punch of a movie ("I'm fiiiinnnished!"). It shows the complete obliteration of empathy and decay of the soul in the character of Daniel Plainview, especially after his one tie to humanity--his adopted son--is damaged. It's a terrifying film, but it's also a brave one. It acknowledges that monsters do indeed walk among us. And sometimes, they drink our milkshakes.

In The Master, Anderson once again turns a brutal eye on humankind. And it is beautiful, unsettling, and kind of...disappointing.

The Master has been hyped as a movie that's about Scientology, but not really, but yeah kind of is. Officially, Anderson denies any connection between his character Lancaster Dodd (played grandly by Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. However, the fictional character and the real life man do share a similar timeline, and "The Cause"--as Dodd refers to his religion/cult/lifestyle--has similarities to Scientology.

But these connections are beside the point. Dodd creates The Cause as a way for human beings to rise above the animals and perfect themselves. According to The Cause's followers, humans can mentally go back in time to past lives and correct mistakes and illnesses in an attempt to perfect themselves in the present. It all sounds like mumbo jumbo of course, but Dodd has a gentleness and warmth that lulls new followers into a sense of security and belonging.

A place to fit in is exactly what troubled WWII veteran Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix, in a performance that will make us all forget that unfortunate "rap" career) needs. Quell is violent, shell-shocked, and an alcoholic whose addiction is so extreme, he turns to Lysol and paint thinner in a pinch. Phoenix plays Quell with a mush-mouth that would put Marlon Brando to shame. I could barely understand what the man was saying (and could hear all the other characters perfectly). Quell seems so out of it that I wondered if he was supposed to be brain damaged. It's an excellent performance, but it's not relatable in any way. It was hard to feel anything for Quell except a mild, consistent sense of disgust.

Quell stumbles into Dodd's world purely by accident, but he's accepted by the man immediately. It's clear that Dodd wants to use Quell as an experiment of sorts: can he cure this broken man? And Quell, although eager to fit in, proves more slippery than Dodd expects.

The Master is an ambitious film. It's a visually beautiful film as well, shot in 65mm film, which has an extremely high resolution. Indeed, you can see every crinkle, freckle, and imperfection on Hoffman and Phoenix's faces (which are often shot in close-ups). There are also wonderful scenes of oceans and deserts. I felt like I was watching an IMAX film in a regular theatre.

As I mentioned above, the performances, particularly Phoenix and Hoffman, are just wonderful. This really was a great choice for Phoenix in the aftermath of the I'm Still Here dumbassery. Phoenix, like Daniel Day-Lewis and Marlon Brando, is a hell of a method actor. His agony and anger is palpable. Phoenix really becomes Freddie Quell. And Hoffman once again blows a performance out of the water. He's the perfect fit for the serene, yet self-righteous cult leader.

Despite all my praise, I didn't really like The Master. There was something missing. Boogie Nights had dark humor, Punch-Drunk Love had sweetness, and There Will Be Blood had brutality. All The Master seemed to have was weirdness. Weird bordering on alienating. Granted, pretty much all of Anderson's movies are alienating, but in the case of The Master, it just didn't work. I don't know. I think Anderson really, really wanted this movie to be a great masterpiece--and it shows. It tries too hard. From the interviews I've read about Anderson, he seems like a pretty pretentious and prickly dude. I think he is very aware that he is a great artist, and perhaps this self-knowledge is his achilles heel. The Master has a studied self-consciousness that holds it back.

This is a hard movie to grade. On the one hand, it's got so much going for it. On the other hand, it's too cold and clean to truly be a masterpiece. It's solid, it's good...but it's not great.

3.75 out of 5 stars

Finger Lickin' Good

Movies: Killer Joe

Sometimes I think there is something wrong with me. A miss-wiring of sorts that lets me laugh at events and situations in movies which would be horrifying in real life.

Or maybe I just like dark comedies.

Killer Joe, directed by William Friedkin, is a movie that I would describe as "Tarantino-esque" in the sense that it is graphically violent and also hysterically funny.


Based on the play by the very talented Tracy Letts, Killer Joe is about the Smith family. Chris Smith (Emile Hirsch), a drug dealer, owes his boss a considerable amount of money. He decides that the best way to make some quick dough is to hire a hitman to kill his hated mother, who has a hefty insurance policy. He conspires with his moronic father, slutty stepmother, and young, naive sister, to hire Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaughey, in a performance that deserves an Oscar)--a cop who moonlights as a hitman--to dispose of the woman.

When Chris and his dad, Ansel (Thomas Hayden Church), can't front the killer's fee, Joe says he is willing to accept collateral in the form of Chris's virginal sister, Dottie (Juno Temple). With no other option, Chris reluctantly agrees.

Of course, things don't work out as planned.

A few spoilers ahead...

I was surprised at how much of the film was dedicated to Joe and Dottie's "relationship". Dottie is a very interesting character. She's looks like, acts like, and is treated like a naive schoolgirl. However, she is very observant and is the focal point on which the movie turns. I had difficulty figuring out how old she was supposed to be. There was a scene where I thought she said she was twelve; but then the friend I saw it with insisted she was actually older--say, 15. In either case, Dottie is clearly underage, but has a body just mature enough so that's it's only creepy with she and Joe have sex--as opposed to being downright repulsive.

Regardless of whether Dottie is pubescent or post-pubescent, her seduction is indeed gross. It's hard to read what Killer Joe's interest in her actually means: is he trying to infuriate Chris, or does he just really like young girls? In any case, his manipulation of Dottie is short-sighted since the girl is much smarter than she looks, and, as we find out in the end, isn't easily bossed around.

In addition to statutory rape, Killer Joe has some scenes of violence that made me cover my eyes. Let's just say that you will be put off of pumpkin soup and fried chicken for a while. But all of the scenes of violence were undercut by an absurd humor, to the point where the humor essentially overrode the violence. I found the fried chicken scene, which got so much hype, to be more silly than horrifying. But that's just my reaction. This movie is not for people who don't like violence.

Killer Joe is filled with excellent performances. Emile Hirsch, an actor we don't see enough of, is great as the weaselly Chris. Thomas Hayden Church nails it as Ansel, Chris's father, who is so idiotic he borders on brain dead. Gina Gershon plays the sexy, scheming stepmother Sharla who gets her comeuppance in the above-mentioned fried chicken scene (Google it, if you want to know the details). Juno Temple plays Dottie, the observant girl who falls for Joe. And the titular Joe is played stupendously by McConaughey, who, between this movie and Magic Mike, is having a hell of a year.

The wonderful cast has an excellent script to work with. Letts, who has written a few other very successful plays (Superior Donuts among them), balances the conventions of film noir with scenes that range from nail-bitingly tense to hilarious and absurd. There's a scene--and I don't know if I should credit the writer, director, or cinematographer for this--where Joe tells (not demands or requests, but tells) Dottie to take off her clothes and put on a black dress. While she disrobes, he turns his back and removes his handcuffs (remember, he's a cop), and sets them on the table. My stomach turned at the thought of him using the cuffs on Dottie...but then he removes his gun and badge as well. It turns out that he was also disrobing, in a way. But the way in which he removes the cuffs first was a clearly deliberate choice to make the audience cringe for a moment, before realizing in relief that he was only removing the cuffs, along with the badge and everything else, as a way of undressing. Of course, the relief is short lived when we remember that this is a 40-something man seducing a girl barely in her teens.

It's moments like this--moments that aggressively and cleverly challenge the audience--that were so appealing about this movie. Killer Joe really was a smart-trashy film, if such a thing is possible.

5 out of 5 stars

Prime of Their Lives

Movies: Hope Springs

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