Film review: The Rebound

Published on Thursday 14 January 2010 10:10

The Rebound (15) ** Directed by: Bart Freundlich Starring: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Justin Bartha, Art Garfunkel

IN The Rebound, another faintly insulting rom-com promoting a marketing man's idea of what women really want from movies, Catherine Zeta-Jones plays Sandy, a 40-year-old suburban mother-of-two who takes charge of her life by divorcing her cheating husband, moving with her kids to New York, getting a high-powered career and falling in love with someone – wait for it – in his mid-twenties!

That last part is the non-shocking twist that's supposed to sustain The Rebound, through the otherwise dull pairing of Zeta-Jones with Justin Bartha's Aram, a can't-decide-what-to-do-with-his-life barista who becomes Sandy's babysitter then her boyfriend after the pair meet in a self-defence class full of angry women.

An old soul still smarting from his failed marriage, Aram's age is inflated into an issue for no other reason than the film needs a vaguely topical hook on which to hang its assorted jumble of rom-com clichs and woefully broad comic set-pieces (the blind date that ends with Sandy's suitor taking a crap in the street is the low point).

Still, the bizarrely bloated montage that ends the film on a high of sugary sentimentality does almost qualify for so-bad-it's-hilarious honours. Almost.