Hope Springs [HD]

My wife and I both enjoyed. Guys, learn how to romance a lady.
Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones, and Steve Carell prove their worth as actors in roles they seldom play, but they all did a stellar job. As usual for these box-office hit professionals. Carell as Dr. Feld who takes a week to turn a stagnant 31-yr-old marriage on it's un-bridled love heals. Kay and Arnold are the couple who have to face marriage sexual reality in front of a shrink. Viewers feel as awkward as the characters are portrayed. Good acting makes this good story achieve greatness.

It's scenic, since the Omaha couple travel to Great Hope Springs, Maine for the intense week of therapy. And it's quite believable. It's emotional, like the struggles and high points of a real marriage after 31 years. In Feld's office, it goes from pathetic to comic. Intense to relief. Moments of endearment and others where the revelations become loud and in-your-face. Sometimes I wished I could hide myself, other moments I squeezed my wife's knee. She watched in the theater seat beside me...

Hope Springs Eternal for a Marriage That Has Lost Its Way Thanks to Masterful Work from Streep and Jones
When I saw Meryl Streep play the seemingly facile Omaha housewife she portrays in this 2012 marital dramedy, I had an immediate flashback to an underrated romantic drama she did almost thirty years ago, Ulu Grosbard's Falling in Love (1984), in which she played a young married woman who couldn't help falling for a married architect (Robert De Niro) on a commuter train. I kept thinking of Kay as that earlier character all these years later trying to fan the embers of the passion that erupted so unpredictably back then. Interestingly, her younger character could not consummate the affair either but fell hopelessly in love anyway. Director David Frankel (The Devil Wears Prada) and first-time screenwriter Vanessa Taylor travel to the opposite end of the marital spectrum, a 31-year-old marriage that finds Kay and her accountant husband Arnold...

Tears ran down my face.
I took my mom and sister to see this. Purposely put my sister between me and my mom (I had read it was more drama than comedy. And I had heard about the theater scene). Within 5 minutes I was choking up. Don't get me wrong, there are times of absolute hilarity, the audience was roaring with laughter at a lot of scenes. However, it just struck me as a more realistic portrayal of life. Honest. Everyone's hopes, dreams, wishes.....and the inevitable feeling of those dreams drifting away. But then resulting in a journey of acceptance and love. For me it was an emotional kick in the gut. Maybe that's just me. But this film made me a blubbering idiot. If you have parents that are getting up there in age, and you are feeling this creeping up on yourself as well, fair warning. Do not let this film bypass you. Meryl Streep tore at my heart. Amazing, seemingly effortless work by her. Yes, her again. For those who criticize her work as being too, for lack of a better word, "studied" or...

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