Everyone knows how romcoms work. Boy meets girl. Boy and girl are pretty different, but eventually fall in love while engaging in wacky hijinks. They of course come to a point where they break up, and a downer montage ensues before they get back together at the very end. Everybody knows this, and it's a surprise that any romcoms are popular anymore; they're pretty played out.
But then comes along The Rebound: a strange little mess of a movie that somehow manages to hit every single cliche, every single dopey moment... and do it all completely wrong. Almost nothing in this movie works, from the incredibly convoluted beginning to the, frankly, bizarre and out of place ending. The whole thing is a fairly entertaining-in-a-bad-sort-of-way mess.
For what it's worth, the two leads aren't that bad. Justin Bartha is likable and charming and Catherine Zeta-Jones plays the cougar thing just fine; no, the problem is that the writing is absolutely dreadful. None of the jokes actually land, especially towards the beginning of the film and it's hard to connect with any of the secondary characters because they're pretty much just one-joke punchlines. Jones's friend is catty, Bartha's friend humps things; there's some deep stuff going on here.
But despite all it's badness, it's strangely watchable. There's one scene in the movie that actually plays pretty well, mostly due to the performance of the actors. But the rest of the movie is a very cheesy and formulaic romcom that is certainly appealing more to the 40s+ women demographic rather than a 20-something male. And there's some entertainment to be had in there. Not quite sure what that says about me.
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