Film Reviews

The Rebound

• Rating:
• Director: Bart Freundlich
• Starring: Catherine Zeta-Jones
• Details: US/97mins (15A)

A romantic comedy that has arrived in a fairly muted manner, The Rebound is another mildly entertaining effort that will appease those who enter their local multiplex looking to be distracted for an hour and a half. Offering the strange romantic pairing of Justin Bartha and Catherine Zeta Jones, it covers similar ground to a little known Uma Thurman/Barbara Streisand flick from a few years ago, Prime. But nobody goes to films of this ilk expecting originality, and Bartha and Jones have decent enough chemistry to distract from the banality of the plot.
Jones plays Sandy, a suburban mother of two, who bolts from what she believed was domestic bliss when she catches her husband sticking his pee-pee in her neighbour's speak-hole. Taking her two kids and heading for Manhattan, she begins a new life in the city. Daunting at first, she soon finds her feet, thanks mostly to Bartha's coffee shop worker, who inadvertently becomes her nanny. As Sandy see's Bartha's good Jewish boy for the sweet, caring sort that he is, a romance blossoms, then moves pretty fast. But is the fifteen year age gap too much for them to handle?
Boasting one of the most drawn out montages in movie history, to go into specifics would ruin plot points; but suffice to say that it must hold some kind of record for time passed during a musical montage. In fairness to writer/director Freundlich, he's hardly lazy in the build up to the relationship, and takes his time establishing both characters before properly introducing them to each other.
While Bartha is good and Jones fine, the things that happen to their characters are beyond lucky, and seem to simply fall into their lap. Zones lands a great job sharpish and never really struggles. Everyone likes her and then she lands a better job and everyone loves her; while Bartha turns down good jobs "for the kids."
The Rebound plods along, without ever being really funny or charming, which seems to be the norm with romantic comedies nowadays. It's never awful, though, which can probably be credited to Bartha, who occasionally rises above the mediocre script to prove he deserves more lead roles.

Review by Mike Sheridan