Caffeinated Clint
By Clint Morris
A bit like a Wedding with lousy catering, the new romantic comedy ”The Rebound” comes pre-packaged in prettiness (well, tell me Catherine Zeta Jones isn’t one of the most gorgeous women you’ve ever laid eyes on!!?) but when all is said and done it takes more than divine dresses, friendly faces and beauticious beats to wholly satisfy.
Bart Freundlich’s film is yet another off-the-conveyor-belt Hollywood comedy that pits yet another mismatched couple together. The idea pretty much starts and ends there.
The buxom Mrs Douglas plays Sandy, a distraught single mother (what kind of fool would cheat on a wife that looks like Zeta-Jones!?) who packs up the kids and moves everyone to New York City for a fresh start. Once there she moves her brood into an apartment above a coffee shop – a coffee shop whose barista is, of course, a young spunk (”The Hangover”s Justin Bartha) whose just ‘great with kids’.
One latte leads to another and before too long the twenty-something Aram isn’t only playing babysitter to forty-something Sandy’s offspring, but he’s also sharing her bed.
As the title suggests, it’s up to both Sandy and Aram – who’s also recently gone through a rough break-up – to work out whether their relationship is actually real, or whether or not it’s just a coming together of convenience.
It’s not really clear what kind of film Freundlich – whose last film, ”Trust the Man”, was also a tale of turbulent relationships – was aiming to make here. It starts out like a goofball romantic comedy, the likes of which Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts made a name for themselves for in the mid-to-late 90s, dissolves into a heavy-going drama about a couple fighting the forces of nature to stay together, and eventually makes a prickly transition into an adventure flick, with our male lead packing his bags for poverty-stricken Africa, if only temporarily.
And considering how fun the film’s stars are to watch here (and dare I say, they have obvious chemistry; hope Catherine’s Oscar Winning husband wasn’t lurking around the set the day of those love scenes!) the film’s faults might solely lie with its writer/director and his knack for penning sloppy dialogue and cliched plotting. But then Good Machine (the film’s production company) should’ve known better than to hire Freundlich – up til now he’s made nothing but tolerable, forgettable fodder (like the aforementioned ”Trust the Man”, the kiddie comedy ”Catch That Kid”, and the ambitious but flat drama ”The Myth of Fingerprints”), the likes of which Catherine Zeta Jones has probably never even seen.
So…How did Mr Freundlich get the job? Well, someone obviously owed someone a favour her… Or perhaps, he had his well-known actress/wife Julianne Moore shop his script for him? Whatever the case, he got his fairly substandard story through a door, and onto the screen. And assuming this makes its budget back, it likely won’t be the last we’ll hear of him.
In all fairness, ”The Rebound” is entertaining enough, and both leads do a fine enough job (again, it isn’t easy to take your eyes away from the divine Zeta Jones), but why one would want a slice of processed Devon over a leg of turkey, I dunno – save your cash for something a little more meatier.
