The exact opposite of Killer Joe (a daring surface movie with a somewhat cheap center), Hope Springs is a comfortable, feel-good movie that actually contains a quiet, deep knowledge of relationships. There is more truth and perceptiveness in this film than in the last twenty big studio romances I’ve seen. Much like Ruby Sparks, it starts out as a somewhat formula-driven film with a comedic “hook” (a long married couple enters couples counseling to get the old spark back…against the husband’s will) that grows gradually more serious, more romantic, and more honest.
What Works: Meryl Streep takes a break from playing larger-than-life historical figures (The Iron Lady, Julia and Julia) and imposing women (Doubt, The Manchurian Candidate, well, also The Iron Lady), and here plays a touchingly real woman. It’s a refreshing change of pace for her to play the type of woman you might easily not look twice at on the street, and still make her interesting.
And Tommy Lee Jones is even more impressive, playing a paradoxically macho man’s-man who seems to have lost interest in sleeping with his wife. Jones starts out doing all his familiar mannerisms (the grouchy demeanor, the pained facial expressions, the gruff one liners) but there’s something sly and revolutionary behind it. He’s showing us what it would be like to actually be married to one of Jones’s typical characters, a man who’s not an action hero but a husband…and exactly how difficult that would be. There’s nothing “cute” about it, and watching this shut-down man gradually explain how he got there, and slowly want to come back fuels the movie in a surprisingly exciting way. You begin to see a desperation behind his buttoned-down exterior, and the more he lets that out (along with his character’s desire), the more I felt like I was an actor I’ve known of my entire conscious life for the first time.
What Doesn’t Work: Some people have complained about the ending. Well, the ending may be more sentimental than is fashionable to like right now, but there’s no question that it’s earned.
What I Would Have Done Differently: Does every joke work? No. Do they try too hard to make the material “accessible” to a mass audience? Yes. But in this era of superhero films and vampire movies, to find a movie about two “heroes” who are trying to save their marriage instead of the world, feels like a minor triumph to me.
Need more people in real life that actually try to save their marriage. Economy is result of bad marriages, bad mortgages and people not sticking with something when anything becomes remotely hard.