Movies love the "ride off into the sunset"-style ending. Boy meets girl, boy wins over girl, boy and girl live happily ever after. Few, however, get into what happens on the other side of that horizon, and even fewer tackle how the two fare once twilight sets in.

"Hope Springs," on the other hand, devotes a whole movie to it. Tommy Lee Jones and Meryl Streep star as Arnold and Kay, a stuck-in-a-rut couple just hitting their twilight years. The kids have moved out and started families, they have their everyday routines down to a science and they move through the day with all of the excitement of a DMV line. After Kay decides she wants to re-ignite the spark in their humdrum marriage, the couple makes the trip to a marriage retreat in Great Hope Springs to meet with renowned therapist Dr. Feld (Steve Carell).

It's natural to assume that seeing Carell's name attached to "Hope Springs" means a fair amount of laughter and kooky antics are in store. This is only half true. There are plenty of funny moments, but none come from Carell's usual schtick. In fact, he plays his part with an earnest seriousness that's almost suspicious – you half expect him to burst out laughing and confess it was all some kind of joke.

This would be more than a little distracting if it weren't for commanding performances from both Jones and Streep. They take their otherwise mundane roles (stubborn husband, demure housewife) and fill them out into actual people, and together they do a great job of conveying the couple's 30-year marriage and its ups and downs. Through their recollections and descriptions of their marriage the audience gets an even blend of good-natured humor, endearing awkwardness and sadness, and it's made all the more real by the pair's full commitment to the characters.

"Hope Springs" is a heartwarming and earnest story, but it's not without its hiccups. Its flow is interrupted by a few scenes the movie could have gone without and a handful of one- or two-line characters who don't really have to be there, but somehow, the mix works. It's a very reserved movie in comparison to the usual summer bombast, but quality actors and a measured plot make "Hope Springs" worthwhile.