Pick of the week: Couples therapy with Meryl and Tommy Lee

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Here’s the problem with serendipity: The moment you start to measure or describe it, you also start to undermine it. If I tell you I’ve been to Utica or Fresno and had a surprisingly wonderful time, you start building up your expectations. Then when you go there and find out there’s no underground music scene, no used bookstore and no place to eat organic, free-range steak, you get all disappointed and think I’m an idiot. On that principle, I ought to keep my review of “Hope Springs,” the new marriage dramedy starring Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones, to a few words: Not quite what you’re expecting. Really! So check it out, and I’ll see you here next week.

OK, I’ll keep going. But don’t claim you weren’t warned! Anyway, it’s probably fairer to say that “Hope Springs” both is and is not what you’re expecting. It feels as if director David Frankel (“The Devil Wears Prada”) and screenwriter Vanessa Taylor (a veteran TV writer-producer whose credits include “Game of Thrones” and “Everwood”) set themselves a technical or formal challenge: Can we strip the midlife-crisis movie, one of the most familiar templates in Hollywood comedy, down to its most pure and basic elements and cut out all the cheap gags?

Salon.com > Hope Springs

Pick of the week: Couples therapy with Meryl and Tommy Lee