Hope Springs

The 30-year marriage of a middle-aged Midwestern couple has lapsed into latter-day doldrums. At the behest of wife Kay (Meryl Streep), husband Arnold (Tommy Lee Jones) grudgingly agrees to join her for an “intensive” week of counseling in the offices of a therapist in a small town in Maine. The therapist is played by Steve Carell, but Hope Springs is only partly a comedy, and Carell’s part is played fairly straight, in keeping with the film’s prevailing tone of very gentle irony. Vanessa Taylor’s script manages a kindly, even-handed approach to the couple’s troubles, but the main characters, as written, need some crafty rescuing by the star actors. Director David Frankel (The Devil Wears Prada, Marley & Me) does a rather lackluster job of managing the script’s mixtures of comedy and drama. Jones soldiers gamely through a characterization that lingers in simplistic caricature for more than half the film. Streep may have the advantage of playing the character whose point-of-view is honored right from the start, but she still delivers a smartly nuanced account of Kay’s sweetly conflicted character. Mimi Rogers’ cameo as a neighbor woman who interests Arnold is virtually thrown away. Cinemark 14 and Paradise Cinema 7. Rated PG-13.