Review of “The Rebound”
I was surprised to read about a recent spate of Cougar Conventions across the country, at which the younger men in attendance (the “cubs”) voted for their favourite older women. As for the Cougars themselves, they were being encouraged to overcome their irrational bias against younger men, who are apparently better because they have more energy, treat women more as equals, and most importantly don’t need Viagra. After initially imagining the typical Cougar to be more a Joan Collins than a Demi Moore, some research (purely desk-based of course) revealed that 35 is a perfectly acceptable age to qualify. This means that Catherine Zeta-Jones - at 41 - may go down as the first lead in the new Cougedy genre.
In the utterly predictable The Rebound, Zeta-Jones is the yummy-mummy Sandy who takes her two children off to New York after discovering her husband fooling around with a young thing. Quickly settling into a routine with a new apartment and new job at a sports broadcaster, she hooks up with an old girlfriend who encourages her to date in order to get the rebound stigma out of her system. After a distinctly tacky night out with a man of appropriate age but unsuitable habits, Sandy decides to throw herself into her work. This means that her 25-year-old baby-sitter Aram (Justin Bartha) must spend more time with her children and at her apartment. Of course, it’s a short step from there to the bedroom, and before you can say “Mrs. Robinson”, the age-challenged lovers are fending off the jibes from her children and colleagues and his very Jewish parents.
Whilst there are the occasional moments of genuine humour, The Rebound has trouble settling into a consistent tone. Writer/director Bart Freundlich bounces from pure farce (especially with his very shallow supporting characters) to cheesy romance, with some potty-humour thrown in for good measure. Watch out, too, for what will surely go down as the most ludicrous montage in movie history as the story zips forward five years so that Aram can grow up a bit. For the first hour the film seems force-fitted around staged comic scenes before it settles into an overly conventional boy-girl narrative. Whilst both Zeta-Jones and Bartha are perfectly likeable in their respective roles as goofy-Jewish boy and competitive super-mum, there’s no real passion or personality to ground the story, and it all washes out in a hazy glow of nice-ness.
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