Wrinkly romantics

Unfortunately, this comedy probably won't live to a ripe old age

Hope Springs ***

Right now Hollywood "comedy" comes in two styles. Producer Judd Apatow has created a string of outrageously raunchy hits like Bridesmaids and The Five Year Engagement.

The alternative tends to be teen farces, laden with drugs and bodily fluids. Films like Project X and American Reunion, the finale of the original American Pie series, make a lot of money out of teen filmgoers.

Director David Frankel tends to work in the middle ground. He is one of the few directors who make sophisticated comedies for an older, more discerning audience. His previous hits have been The Devil Wears Prada (2006), the charming Marley and Me (2008) with Jennifer Aniston, and the eccentric comedy The Big Year (2011), about extremely competitive bird-watchers.

In his latest film, Hope Springs, he has cast two Hollywood veterans in a clever, grown-up comedy. It's about a loving couple who have, over three decades, become friends rather than lovers. The casting is clever. Meryl Streep is 63 and Tommy Lee Jones is 66, the age when most people start thinking about retiring and downsizing their lives.

It's the story of Kay (Streep) and Arnold (Jones), who realise that their lives have become a safe, unchanging ritual.

They do the same things in the same order and while the comfortable routine is reassuring, after 31 years Kay is starting to feel bored and slightly disappointed. There's an old saying, "the only difference between a rut and a grave, is the depth", and Kay decides to step out of that rut and create some changes.

That's what the title Hope Springs is all about. It derives from the poet Alexander Pope who wrote Hope springs eternal in the human breast.

Kay persuades the reluctant Arnold to join her in a one-on-one "couples workshop" that takes place in a small seaside town called Hope Springs, organised by a celebrity counsellor, Dr Feld (Steve Carrell).

It's not easy for Kay and Arnold to open up but as they do, they create a genuinely funny comedy. We are used to seeing Jones as a granite-faced, minimalist actor but in this film he produces a genuinely clever comedy performance and an American critic has described him as "50 shades of grumpy". He does not drop the gruffness nor does he fall into embarrassing sentimentality. The balance Jones creates between this man's ingrained habits and his new perceptions about himself, his wife and their newly invigorated affection for each other, has a delicacy that this actor has seldom shown before.

Streep is usually considered to be a drama diva, but she gave great comedy performances in Mamma Mia! and It's Complicated. In this film, she produces warmth and intimacy in a situation that is fraught with pitfalls.

Working with these two stars is Carrell - he keeps a straight face, never loses his composure and the fact that he is so low-key is the source of his witty performance.

US audiences greeted the film with polite applause; I suspect that will also be the case in SA. It's a small-scale movie, and it won't stay on the charts for long, so for fans of films with maturity, see it soon.

Short Takes

The Possession ***

Danish director Ole Bornedal has excelled in the field of crime and occult mystery and Sam Raimi is the producer of great fantasy thrillers like "The Evil Dead", "Darkman" and many others. Their collaboration on this occult thriller delivers an entertaining film. It starts with a prologue in which a woman is trying to open a sealed antique box when she is attacked by an unknown entity.

The sealed box is subsequently put on a yard sale where new neighbours Stephanie (Kyra Sedgwick) and her husband, Clyde (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), are intrigued by its design and buy it. Their daughter Em (Natasha Calis) says she can hear noises from inside the box. At the same time, her sweet personality undergoes violent changes.

Her worried parents find out that the ancient box was a cage in which the soul of a malicious demon, a dybbuk, has been entrapped. The dybbuk feeds off the family's fear, but how can they get rid of it? Can it be exorcised? Can it get out the box to create chaos? Horror fans will hear echoes of "The Exorcist" and "The Omen". As movies about tormented souls and demons go, this is a good example.

The Campaign **

Cam Brady (Will Ferrell) is a yes-man who will lend his vote to anyone as long as it gets him another term in congress. On the other side is Marty Huggins (Zach Galifianakis), who knows nothing about politics and cares even less.

He's a dimwit travel agent who is manipulated into office by the greedy Motch brothers (played by John Lithgow and Dan Aykroyd). They use Marty as a front, behind which all kinds of seamy deals are made. An American audience might be amused by the film's jokes, but this brash political farce is so focused on the US that people in other countries may wonder what it all means.

Piranha 3DD **

The first "Piranha" was released in 1978 and was a "cheap thrills" horror. Three mediocre sequels have followed and only two things have changed: the bloody special effects have become more bloody and the females are now virtually naked most of the time. The film's title says "3DD" as opposed to the usual 3D label.

 The second D indicates that many really large female breasts will be on show.

The movie starts with a brief newsreel about previous piranha attacks, but Chet (David Koechner), the greedy owner of the lake resort, has spruced up the place for the summer visitors. His daughter Maddy (Danielle Panabaker), a marine biologist, warns him that the killer fish are still in the lake, hungrier than ever - and you pretty much know what happens next.

One of the film's surprises is a cheerful cameo role by David Hasselhoff (pictured below), who plays himself, posing for photos and signing autographs and looking almost as scary as the piranhas.