Bounce Review
by "Jonathan F Richards" (MOVIECRITIC AT prodigy DOT net)November 24th, 2000
Movie Review by Jonathan Richards
SECRETS AND LIES
BOUNCE
Written and Directed by Don Roos
With Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Affleck
PG-13 102 min.
2-1/2 chiles
One of the most enduring sub-genres of the romantic movie is the one where the relationship is entered into by one of the parties under false pretenses, and a secret hangs over the proceedings like a dark cloud which is going to have to flash some lightning and rumble some thunder and get everybody wet before the skies clear and the lovers kiss and make up. Often it's a bet the guy's made that he can woo and win (or these days, bed) the girl. Sometimes it's something darker and more personal, as in this year's "Return to Me", where Minnie Driver keeps putting off telling David Duchovny that she's wearing his late wife's heart.20
Writer/director Don Roos, the indie auteur of the quirky "The Opposite of Sex", has chosen to fly these friendly skies in his second outing, a formulaic weeper that waffles between clever charm and awkward writing and is largely rescued by its two stars, Gwyneth Paltrow and Ben Affleck. Their job is made more difficult by some contrived situations, a few tin-eared speeches, and an end game with the subtlety of a rubber boat full of explosives. But these two have the talent, appeal, and chemistry (reinforced by real-life tabloid gossip) to almost pull it off.
It is a rule of movies that if somebody gives you his seat on a plane, that plane will surely go down, a rule Tony Goldwyn would have done well to brush up on. He doesn't, the plane does, and the result is a grieving widow in L.A., and a guilt-ridden ad exec, the guy who gave up the seat, watching the news in the Chicago airport hotel with a shapely stranded fellow traveler.
The air disaster sends Buddy Amaral (Affleck) into a downward spiral of alcoholism. He's part owner of "the hottest little ad agency on the coast," for whom he's just closed a contract with Infinity Airlines before their plane crashes. (Roos shows a weakness for meaningful names - Amaral is amoral, and infinity is just where the passengers go.) Heavy drinking leads Buddy into some inappropriate behavior vis-vis the client, and his partner/boss (Joe Morton) steers him into a rehab clinic.
When he gets out, it's been a year since the crash, and in running over his 12-step AA manual he is struck by #9, which enjoins him to make amends wherever possible. So he looks up the widow Abby (Paltrow) to see if there isn't something he can do for her, and it turns out there is. They meet cute, if you can find cuteness in the jaws of an attack Rottweiler, and he manages to throw some real estate business her way. (The dog's name is also Buddy, which raises complications, but none as great as those inherent in the name itself: a line like "What is it you want, Buddy?" hits the ear differently than it would if his name were, say, Howard.)
The movie takes pains to show the pains he takes not to get involved with her after his 9th step intervention, but the centrifugal force of true love is too strong. And soon we're in a Situation. Roos handles it well, with a slick romanticism reminiscent of the golden days of Hollywood when romantic clichE9s had a good name, when stars like Grant = and Stanwyck and Stewart and Davis stamped their indelible personae on contrived smiling-through-the-tears material. Affleck and Paltrow are up to that standard. He makes a credible transition from glib, shallow jerk to sensitive male, and she handles her role with remarkable subtlety, rejecting easy sympathy while managing to show an irresistible vulnerability. It's a beautiful performance that confirms her Oscar-winning talents.
Movies are easier to begin than to end, but there's no excuse for the depths to which this one sinks in its plot-resolving scene, which involves courtroom testimony and Court TV. There have been problem moments before in the story, but after this clunker, even the winning grace of the actors can't keep it aloft, and the worn places begin to show like threadbare patches of carpet when the furniture is moved. There is also a sense of things inserted as plot devices, and of parts of characters and situations that may have been jettisoned to keep the bounces a little more buoyant.20
Still, for most of its modest length "Bounce" lopes along with the smooth, easy ride of a polished genre picture. On the whole Roos is better at the high points - when he goes for the tear ducts he falls a little short. The movie benefits from a solid supporting cast. Caroline Aaron is all knowing sympathy as Abby's best friend, the usually villainous Tony Goldwyn has a chance here to show his nice side, and the always-welcome Joe Morton is gruff but caring. Johnny Galecki as Buddy's brash recovering alcoholic gay assistant almost steals the show, except that his alcoholism and gayness, inserted as if meaningful, are never revisited.20
When the shoe falls, as it must, just before Buddy summons the courage to confess his secret, it falls with the kind of timing God leaves to screenwriters. But after all, it is a movie; and for all its failings, it's one that almost rises above pleasant to achieve the level of good.20 --
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