As all the film critics were spouting their choices for the most-anticipated film of the summer, we in southeastern Connecticut had our own, very self-referential choice: "Hope Springs."

Everyone was Streep-crazy last fall when Meryl, Queen of American Acting, and Tommy Lee Jones, He Who Roomed With Al Gore at Harvard, hit the mean streets of Stonington Borough to shoot scenes for their romantic comedy.

Those who could be extras were, and those who couldn't be, watched the filming. Seeing the finished product is surely going to be a Where's Waldo exercise, where everyone will be scanning for people they know wandering across the background.

Oh, you want to know storyline, do you? Streep and Jones play a couple - wed for 30 years - who try marriage counselling from a character played by Steve Carell.

Get to a theater Wednesday, when "Hope Springs" opens on the Big Screen. It'll be playing at Niantic, Madison Art Cinemas, Olde Mistick Village Art Cinemas, Stonington and Westbrook cinemas.

- KRISTINA DORSEY