DVD--The Rebound

or: Age Does Matter: Part 254

One word to sum it up: Cute

I have a problem. No matter how much I hate them, no matter how much I try to stay away, I still like to watch romantic comedies. They aren't my favourite lot of movies, but sometimes there are only so many psychological thrillers one can take. I am always attracted to watching rom-coms randomly then picking up an action of some kind. While most of them are crap, some manage to be a bit better than the average. Like The Rebound.

Sandy (Catherine Zeta-Jones), upon discovering her husband's infidelity while watching her son's birthday video, leaves the suburbs and moves into the city. She gets an apartment that's above a coffee house where she befriends one of the workers, Aram (Justin Bartha), a guy whose wife only married him so she could get a green card. Soon after moving into the apartment, Sandy hires Aram to be her nanny while she takes on work for the first time since her children where born. It isn't long when Aram and Sandy find they get along wonderfully and start to date. But the question is: is their relationship real or is it, in fact, just a rebound for both of them?

Unsurprisingly, The Rebound is pretty formulaic. Surprisingly, though, it was a lot different then I thought it would be. For one thing, the lead characters were actually nice people. Sandy wasn't just another woman whining about aging. Aram, however, was the reason this movie was so cute. He was a guy who for once didn't care about sex and instead cared about helping others. And he just happened to be one of the cutest babysitters ever. But, to be honest, putting Catherine Zeta-Jones and Justin Bartha in a movie together just didn't work. Either I have a pre-conceived idea that Catherine is always the bad girl or Justin is just too cute, they just didn't seem right for each other. Brownie points for trying, though.

The Rebound is really nice in the way that the characters didn't annoy the crap out of me and I actually cared about them. I wouldn't call this much of a 'romantic comedy' because it's very dramatic. Quite heart-breaking, if you ask me. It starts off quite funny, but doesn't put itself out by making divorce seem funny. At some times it feels like it isn't going anywhere, and by the end, you may feel that it doesn't, but it wanders through 90 minutes as painlessly as possible. Which is, strictly speaking, a breath of fresh air.



THE VERDICT: Doesn't offer anything new to the romance genre, but manages to be likeable as it refrains from most of the cliches. It's not laugh-out-loud funny, however, it has a lot of charm and sweetness which makes for some easy viewing.

6/10