"Hope Springs" Eternal... Or Does It?

How do you put the pep back in your step after 31 years of marriage?

The Story:

A married couple, Kay and Frank (Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones) have been married for 31 years.  Their life is...very routine.  Kay (not Tommy Lee Jones...causing MiB confusion) isn't all that happy though.  So she makes plans to go see a couples therapist (Steve Carrell) in the very distant city of Hope Springs to see if they can recapture the spark, or if the marriage is actually over.


Okay, at some point I need to acknowledge that I am not the biggest fan of Meryl Streep.  She's a good actress, but I would have to say she is easily the most overrated actress in the history of cinema (modern).  Give the roles to someone else, I bet they could do a good job too....

That said, she won me over here with her performance of a wife who is in love with the idea of being in love with her husband.

Conversely, Tommy Lee Jones is perhaps the most underrated actor in the history of cinema (all time) and he simply owns any and all parts he has ever inhabited.  Even movies I haven't fully enjoyed often are salvaged by his appearance... thinking No Country for Old Men or something like that.

Finally, the third actor in essentially a 3 person movie (all other characters are superfluous and irrelevant in the overall scheme of things..) is Steve Carell.  I've yet to figure out where he fits on the actor scale, but let's just say that his dramatic, ie: not zany, turns do not go unnoticed nor unappreciated.

You will believe he is a marriage therapist.

But essentially this is a story about love, and how that can be taken for granted and slowly erode into an auto-pilot functioning if you're not careful.

Seriously, watch the choreography between Kay and Frank just in the morning kitchen scenes at home and imagine that this has been happening for 30 years... you can FEEL it!

3.5 out of 5 stars!