After thirty years of marriage, a middle-aged couple attends an intense, week-long counseling session to work on their relationship.
There’s much here to enjoy, even if the incessant upbeat soundtrack and picture-postcard locales add a slightly too-jaunty sheen to three fine central performances.
If you have ever wondered how Dame Meryl might fellate a banana, I’m afraid this is for you.
Very funny, it’s also penetrating on the ravages of time on love and marriage and sweetly touching, but with abundantly incongruous randy content to heartily amuse.
A clunky and occasionally excruciating watch.
Rather than trusting Streep, Jones and Carell to use their skills as actors to convey anything worthwhile about the way companionship leads to complacency, the film hammers home every point with an explain-all piece of therapy speak, an overbearing joke or a honking soundtrack cue.
In the end, of course, it comes down to the chemistry, and this relationship really does feel like one worth fighting for.
When cinemas are stuffed with juvenile comedies it’s a great treat to watch one that is aimed at grown-ups and treats its audience as such.
As a comedy it won't find much favour with cinema-goers under the age of 40, but for everyone else there's plenty to chuckle at.
Hope springs; but not without a witty, pithy script it doesn't.
Hope dies.
Hope Springs is, for the most part, a mature, sympathetic chamber piece that deals with sex, and the lack thereof, with an admirably straight face.
The inevitable message is that what happens in Maine doesn't necessarily stay in Maine.
Fine turns from Streep and Jones bedrock this compassionate, quietly subversive drama.
Mildly diverting, but far from either of its lead actors’ best.
Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones in Hope Springs
Meryl Streep Springs Eternal
It's not too late to save our marriage.
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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