Potential in 'Hope Springs' dissolves

Trying to close the space between them: Arnold (Tommy Lee Jones) reluctantly goes on a couples counseling retreat with his wife of 31 years, Kay (Meryl Streep), who wants more out of the marriage. (Credit: By Barry Wetcher, Columbia Pictures)

Hope Springs (* * out of four, rated PG-13, opens Wednesday nationwide) feels eternal.

It's about as uncomfortable as sitting through an interminable counseling session — involving two people you hardly know and don't much care about.

The concept of a disconnected couple mired in marital ennui after 31 years of marriage is an intriguing subject for exploration. But director David Frankel (Marley and Me) too often goes for broad laughs. He's lucky to get a few obliging smiles.

Kay (Meryl Streep) has been married to grouchy accountant Arnold (Tommy Lee Jones) for more than three decades. Rattling around their Omaha home, she makes him the same breakfast every morning and sighs as he falls asleep every night in front of the TV watching golf. Not surprisingly, she longs for more. They are devoted in superficial ways, but they have a chasm of emotional distance between them. Hoping to warm up their relationship, Kay buys a book called You Can Have the Marriage You Want. She reads it assiduously. Upon learning that the author, marriage specialist Bernie Feld (Steve Carell), is holding week-long couples counseling retreats in Maine, she pays the $4,000 and signs them up.

Initially resistant, Arnold comes along, and he complains throughout the trip. Feld gives them assignments such as re-learning how to cuddle and cautiously acting out fantasies. In a scene meant to be hilarious, Kay tries to perform an illicit act on Arnold in a movie theater and later buys a banana for practice. Cue cringes here.

Arnold's curmudgeonly character is more vivid than that of Kay, who comes off as meek and colorless. Whose idea was it to cast Streep, the greatest actress of our time, in such an underwritten, vague role?

When a film stars two top actors doing their best with limited material and still feels like a slog, something is clearly amiss with the writing and direction.

The film's tone-deafness is also personified in the miscasting of Carell as the psychologist. So adept at deadpan comedy, Carell has excelled in serious roles leavened with humor, as in Seeking a Friend for the End of the World and Little Miss Sunshine. But in a role that is all dull earnestness, Carell is the wrong man for the job.

In youth-obsessed Hollywood, studio execs deserve kudos for making a movie about the intimate lives of two people over 60. If only it was a film with more nuance, sincerity and subtle wit. This is neither an edgy comedy about marital woes nor a serious film about the slow deterioration of a marriage. Halfhearted both comically and dramatically, Hope Springs sidesteps emotional truths in favor of predictable, unfunny gags.

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