'Hope Springs' will be a hit with older moviegoers, but it works with all ages

Older moviegoers are a force to be reckoned with at the box office. They are the demographic that has driven the success of indies like The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. As theatre owners tell it, seniors are some of the most dependable moviegoers of all, able to enjoy a growing amount of free time unhindered by obligations of children.

Hope Springs heads straight into their wheelhouse, offering a gentle, funny tale of a long-married couple who are trying to bring the love (and sex!) back into their marriage. The script and actors (Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones, and Steve Carell) manage to dance around most explicitness in a way that will appease more conservative viewers. They also get a lot of laughs out of Jones' discomfort with anything related to matters of the heart or body. He gets uncomfortable enough for the rest of us.

Streep and Jones are closer to the age of my parents than my peers, but Hope Springs shows that demographics don't matter. It's hard not to get drawn into rooting for the characters' marriage, and doesn't everyone want to believe in a happy-ever-after? As our critic Shirley Sealy puts, it, "The pitch-perfect chemistry of Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones makes Hope Springs a must-see for anyone who’s been in a relationship, or hopes to be."

The role is yet another home run for Streep's career. Movies like  The Devil Wears Prada, Julie & Julia, and Mamma Mia! appealed to both the young and old. She's not exactly Betty White, who has amassed a following of younger viewers enamored with the former "Golden Girls" star specifically because she combines old age with a incongruously sharp humor; rather, Streep has an ageless appeal. If the old adage for a successful star was "men want her, women want to be her," perhaps the update is "older people want to be her, younger people want her to be their friend/boss/mother." Younger viewers shouldn't discount Hope Springs because its stars are greying around the temples, because everyone can be touched by the sweet, hopeful story within.