Email
Print
ShareMumbai: Film: Rebound
Cast: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Justin Bartha
Director/ Writer: Bart Freundlich
Rating: **
Supposedly a rom-com, Rebound is more a romantic drama. Sandy (Zeta-Jones), a 40-year-old and a mother of two moves into New York with her two toddlers, working in a television channel and trying to grapple with issues of her past. Her past: Well, she enters her home to find her husband in an orgasmic fit with another woman.
Neighbouring her home in NY, is 24-year-old Aram Finklestein (Justin Bartha). He is a college graduate, the son of rich Jewish parents with many lucrative employment offers at various firms, but he rather spends his time working in a coffee shop, volunteering at a women's centre (where women are taught how to survive in NY), where he gets punched and kicked in his groins. And when he gets chance to play nanny to Sandy's kids, he jumps at the prospect. As he admits to one of his friends, "I find this more fulfilling". What is his issue you ask? Well he's been dumped by his French wife, who married him simply to get a green card, and started dating whom she had always claimed her brother. She had been pretending all along. To top it all, Aram doesn't even want to divorce her, for otherwise she would be deported, he fears. Sandy thinks he is a very nice guy, but to many others, like us, he might just appear dumb.
Predictably, Aram becomes close to the family - the children love him, and slowly the 40-year-old Sandy also does. But as fate, or rather the scriptwriter would have it; Sandy realises that he is too young for her, and that it would never work. "I know I read Harry Potter. But so do many old fellas", he claims. But Sandy refuses to hear a word, and asks him to do what 24-year-olds should. "Go rock Cleveland or something," she suggests.
Well he doesn't exactly rock Cleveland, but in a musical piece, not more than six minutes, traverses continents. He is seen participating in what looks like a Ganpati Visarjan, praying at temples, volunteering and teaching underprivileged kids somewhere in Africa. So at the end of the musical piece, he's back in NY, five years older and bumps into Sandy. He's adopted a Bangladeshi kid too! And when Sandy asks him if he has a wife, he rather cornily says, "We didn't find anyone good enough for us."
The movie starts off not too badly actually. After seeing a barrage of rom-coms with a jerk of a lead guy, and a lead girl who never gets along at first with the guy (read The Ugly Truth, Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past, etc, etc), the movie did appear fresh. Both the leads are wronged and trying to come to terms with it. There is no shrieking and fist-thumping, but a laidback current throughout. There are some good moments, especially with Sandy. In a scene of what can only be called extreme buffoonery, a padded up Aram at the women's centre is asked to face the wrath of women, and an initially hesitant Sandy kicks, elbows, punches Aram and tells him to burn in hell. The scene is otherwise silly and a little forced, but Sandy is terrific, and one sees the agony of a woman wronged.
Zeta-Jones plays her role and her age well. (Note: This might come as a disappointment to fans of her looks). Justin is just about okay, smiling and playing the quintessential nice guy.
So the movie does start decently enough, but it gets bad as Sandy starts getting desperate. She starts relying on Aram more, like dropping and picking the kids from school, and putting the kids to bed. Well all this is fine, but to suggest that a young man would let go of his ambitions to baby-sit seems a little too good to be true. And even if so, makes for a boring man to have as a lead. The pace of the film too is slightly slow. It could have been much more tolerable if one could empathise and feel for the characters, but sadly this isn't the case.
There isn't much of 'com' in this rom-com, and the 'rom' is tiring and cumbersome to watch.
