Rating of
3/4
It takes two to make things work!!!!
MovieAddict - wrote on 04/21/13
Kay and Arnold (Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones) are a married couple with two kids and thirty-one years of marriage. Both have fallen into a complacent life together devoid of intimacy and communication. In short there is no spice in the marriage anymore. Every morning, Kay cooks up a slice of bacon and two eggs sunny side up for Arnold, who sits at the kitchen table with his head buried in a newspaper. Every night, after dinner, Arnold falls asleep in front of the TV, which is tuned to the Golf Channel. We eventually learn that they have not had sex in nearly five years, Arnold is perfectly content to leave things as they are, while Kay realizes that changes need to be implemented if their marriage is to survive.
Kay decides to sign Arnold and her for an intense one week marriage therapy session in a tiny remote city of Hope Springs with a successful marriage counselor Dr. Feld (played by a very straight-faced Steve Carell). When Arnold hears about it, he gets pretty upset at first but he decides to go anyway to comply with his wife, although he nags about it during the whole trip. From this point on in the film the audience is transformed into a fly on the wall in the therapy sessions and assigned sex tasks prescribed by the good doctor to rekindle the spark in their life. But Arnold's unease with contact and Kay's innocence around oral makes for strange fellows. (Pay attention folks, because some day you may end up in the same place as Kay and Arnold if you don’t keep the romance alive.) Older married couples may even be wincing at how familiar some scenes are to them, and younger couples may be dreading if this is what 31 years of being together has in store for them. Food for thought indeed lol.
Recommended for the mature audience and couples who have successfully stayed together through thick and thin for marriage's sometimes stormy misadventures! They’ll be able to relate lol.
