Hope Springs (2012)

  I very nearly didn't get to this movie in time to review it.  I started The Fault in Our Stars, got to the cigarette metaphor, and facepalmed so hard I think I have a permanent dent in my forehead.  Rat Race started with the absolute lowest of stupid humor and I was just not in the mood for it.  And The Heartbreak Kid made me want to scream at my TV within 15 minutes.  I'm not a big Ben Stiller person to begin with and that character was so irritating.

So the answer to the question no one asked is yes, I would rather watch old people fucking than cancer kids or Ben Stiller.  I would give Rat Race another shot because the billionaires-getting-their-comeuppance angle might be enough to get past the sophomoric jokes.

Kay (Meryl Streep) is very unhappy with the state of her marriage to Arnold (Tommy Lee Jones).  After 31 years, they are stuck in a loveless, joyless rut and Kay has had it.  She books a week of intensive couples counseling in Maine, led by Doctor Bernard Feld (Steve Carrell), in a last-ditch effort to save their  relationship.

Seriously.  It's just an old Midwestern couple going through counseling.  There's no big reveals, no juicy twists, just two people who once loved each other trying to find their way back to it by listening to the other's needs and learning how to give a decent blow job.  Streep is absolutely invisible because she's Meryl fucking Streep and that's how acting works and Jones is basically playing the same character he's played for the last fifteen years but it works.  Carrell's character is played absolutely straight, no jokes, no sign that he is a comedian, though I imagine behind the scenes were hilarious given the dialogue he had to say.

It's currently streaming on Starz which I have through Amazon and is perfectly nice, perfectly bland, and has absolutely no Ben Stiller or Shailene Woodley whatsoever.