Bounce

Rating:
Summary: Awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: I WENT TO SEE THIS MOVIE EXPECTING TO JUST FIND ANOTHER SAPPY LOVE STORY BUT THIS MOVIE WAS 100% WONDERFUL.BEN AND GWENETH WERE FABULOUS DEFINATELY A MUST SEE FOR EVERYONE.SO CHECK IT OUT!

Rating:
Summary: Romantic eye candy.
Review: This really isn't a bad movie at all. It's actually very touching at a lot of points. The plot comes full circle and leaves you with that warm fuzzy "love conquers all" message.

Affleck and Paltrow work very well together. Their off-screen romance seems to penetrate into the acting.

Not bad. Good one to see with the girlfriend/wife.

Rating:
Summary: MORE THAN A CHICK FLICK
Review: First a concession, I only went to see this movie to score brownie poits with my fiance. However, I was pleasantly surprised with the film and the perfromances within.

Ben Affleck is a successful ad agency salesman and partner. A storm during the Christmas season has many of the commuters at the Chicago airport stranded. Affleck has a ticket on the last flight to leave for L.A. before the weather gets worse, he gives it up to a fellow traveler. The plane goes down and Affleck has to deal with the guilt, eventually leading him to alcohol. A year later he looks up the widow of the man to whom he gave the ticket. He helps her out with her business dealings and then plans to fade away, but a relationship ensues and the rest is an emotional roller coaster with the underlying secret.

First, Affleck is exceptional in this role. I have never been a great fan of his acting abilities but he is strong and moving as Buddy. He convincingly shows his character's weaknesses and guilt. Paltrow is as always solid as a berieved widow cautiously wading into a new relationship. And although the actor's name escapes me, the character of Affleck's assistant adds necessary humor and sarcasm. (He was the boyfriend of the youngest Connor girl on the T.V. show Roseanne).

Despite the fact that the previews for this film gave you the entire plot, the movie still holds interest throughout. You sit in nervous anticipation wondering "when will she find out and how?". Good acting, good script, good actors make this a good movie and not just a chick flick.

Rating:
Summary: Gwyneth good, Ben bad
Review: Don't get me wrong--"Bounce" is an entirely enjoyable little movie. Ben Affleck plays a man who ultimately feels responsible for Gwyneth's husband's death in a plane crash. So he waits a year, gets himself straightened out, and goes to apologize to her--only to find himself falling in love.

Will they or won't they end up together? The ending doesn't provide much suspense--the only real question is when Gwyneth is going to find out what happened. To the filmmakers' credit, the scene is later than would be expected, which allows some tension to build.

The major problem with this movie is that Ben Affleck never quite musters the dramatic intensity that is required of him in a few scenes. There is one particularly uncomfortable moment when you want him to stop talking about his feelings--because he just isn't believable. This is especially obvious when contrasted with Gwyneth's seemingly effortless performance.

A good supporting cast, including Johnny Galecki of "Roseanne" fame and the too-little seen Tony Goldwyn. A slight but enjoyable film--but I might recommend hitting the fast-forward button when Ben gets misty.

Rating:
Summary: A sweet story!
Review: This movie is so good!! It is such a sweet, well thought-out plot and Ben Affleck and Gwenyth Paltrow did so well!!! The story was so great one of the best things about the movie!! I would highly recomend this one. It is great too because it is not a comedy. I do not particularly like comedies so I was so glad when this one turned out to be just a wonderful romance and not a romantic comedy!!! I was quite entrigued from the begining. I don't want to give anything away, so I won't say more than I would definitely buy this one it is wonderful!!!!

Rating:
Summary: Earnest and dreary
Review: On a very basic level, this movie is just...wrong. "Bounce" has interesting characters and ideas floating around in it, but this is one of those movies whose plot would be over with in about fifteen minutes if the characters just behaved with some common sense and reacted appropriately to the given situations. Instead we get a script by Don Roos which tries to manufacture drama where there is none. The setup for the relationship between Ben Affleck's Buddy and Gwyneth Paltrow's Abby is somewhat involved, but intriguing: Buddy gives his plane ticket to a stranger named Greg, so Greg can get home a little earlier to his family for Christmas and Buddy can stay in Chicago with his lovely new acquaintance Mimi and her overnight room voucher. The next morning Buddy is horrified to learn that the plane crashed and Greg, who was in Buddy's intended seat, was killed. Buddy's survivor guilt makes sense, but his subsequent alcoholism and rehab are never given the weight they should have been given in the story - when was the last time you saw a movie character's descent into alcoholism depicted by a few shots of that character holding a glass? (The script also has the airline company using Buddy's ad firm to design a series of spots which actually CALL ATTENTION to the crash - reality check please!) When he decides to visit Greg's widow (Abby) a year later, to make amends as part of his 12 step program, Buddy doesn't tell her who he is, and this for me doesn't wash: there is no reason for him not to tell her, and the characters could still have entered into a romance from a different (and more interesting) perspective. But instead they're playing "I've Got A Secret". Abby later overreacts melodramatically when she learns about Buddy's connection to Greg's death, because he LIED to her. Of course she lied too - she first tells Buddy she's divorced, and when she later owns up to being a widow, the reason she gives for lying is pretty lame. The keeping-secrets aspect of the plot is illogical - these people are looking for closure of some sort, after all - and it makes the movie seem very formulaic and contrived. There was a good story to be had with these characters, but sadly Don Roos never found it. If he had spent more time showing us the intervening year after the crash, from both characters' POV's, and then let Buddy and Abby cut to the emotional chase when they finally do meet, the movie would have had more of an interesting and substantial arc - instead it's obviously been designed primarily to keep Affleck and Paltrow onscreen together as much as possible.

A little relief from them would have been a nice thing. This is born out by the DVD edition's disc two, which contains deleted scenes fleshing out some of the supporting characters and clarifying some of the plot - it also includes two alternate endings, both of which are better than the one finally chosen for the theatrical release. I'm not sure whether Roos or Miramax made the cutting room decisions, but the deleted scenes contain much better dialogue than a lot of the scenes that did make it into the final cut. This is partially because almost all the scenes involve Affleck or Paltrow talking with supporting characters, rather than to each other - the movie really suffers by the exclusion of these scenes, and it was almost a mistake for Miramax to include them on the disk, since they left this viewer thinking "there was a much better movie here and they blew it!" The supporting characters are played by great actors who are edited down or essentially wasted. Joe Morton, Jennifer Grey (whose character really deserved more screen time), Natasha Henstridge, Caroline Aaron, and David Paymer all do well with the bones they're thrown. Tony Goldwyn does make a very likeable impression as Greg, and Johnny Galecki is a real standout as Buddy's assistant Seth, who is also a member of AA: the deleted scenes involving this character reinforce how exceptionally good Galecki is in the role, but they also confirm that Roos had no idea how to use him in the film. The subject of AA is brought up several times: It would have been cool to see Buddy confronting some of his demons at a meeting, but although this carrot is waved at the audience, we never do get it -- the whole AA angle is just another plot device, as is the airline lawsuit trial, which could really have provided a jolt of dramatic interest if it had been handled better.

As for the stars' performances: well I've never been a Ben Affleck fan, but he actually gives this a valiant effort and has some good moments - if he's not totally convincing in his more emotional scenes, it's at least partially due to the weak writing. Paltrow is excellent, fighting the easy cliche of her role and bringing lots of original shadings to it. She's also much better than Affleck at transcending the clunky dialogue - both of their characters are given stuff to say that I can't imagine anyone in this situation in real life actually saying.

Roos does contribute some nice directorial touches: the plane crash, for instance, is handled in a refreshingly minimalist way, as is the bedroom scene between the leads - it really plays as a love scene for the characters, rather than as a voyeuristic opportunity for the audience. On the technical side, the movie is beautifully shot, as was Roos' previous "The Opposite Of Sex" - I'm not sure if it's the same cinematographer, but whatever else you say about the movie, "Bounce" looks great. The melancholy sound track is unoriginal and bland, with the occasional dreary alternative-folk-rock song thrown in for good measure. Dreary is a good word to describe this flick - it's very earnest, and very dreary. It's hard to categorize it in one or two words (which is not necessarily a bad thing) - "Bounce" is certainly not a romantic comedy, but calling it a drama only belies how basically UN-dramatic it is. I know a lot of people really like this movie, but if you haven't seen it, rent it first to make sure you're one of them, before you buy it.

Rating:
Summary: Couples who play together, should NOT work together.
Review: That's my opinion anyway. It's never gonna work. Didn't work for these two, J-Lo & Benny, Tom & Nicole, I could go on, but I won't. (There probably are many more) This movie probably wouldn't have caught my eye before, except I got it for dead cheap - ?1.20. Plus, it's got two discs to watch - albeit, not terrific extras, but still, cheap is cheap!

As well as Ben & Gwyn, this has a great supporting cast, well, apart from Alex D. Linz, who is as big a brat in this as he is in Home Alone 22. The rest of the supporting cast are great: a strange looking Jennifer Grey, Joe Morton, the 'bad' guy from Ghost, and probably many other faces that I don't recognise, but you will. I felt Jennifer Grey's role kinda got pushed to one side, even though it was an important storyline.

When the film started, it came across as very much a Final Destination storyline. With the plane and everything. To be honest, the film kinda dragged in the scenes between the plane crashing, and Ben meeting Gwyn. (By the way, who calls their child BUDDY?!)

As with all rom-coms, this was very predictable - it just took a while for Benny to get round to telling Gwynnie that he knew her now deceased hubby. You keep rooting for him to tell her, knowing exactly what her reaction was gonna be.

I didn't think Ben & Gwyn were exactly miscast in this movie - but it didn't last between them. And how BAD was her wig/hair extentions at times? I thought my hair was bad for looking like a birds nest half the time - I've now seen the light.

The DVD has your usual batch of extras here: commentary, making-of, deleted Footage with commentary, gag reel (normally, the only worthwhile one for me to watch), "Need to Be Next to You" music video, featurette: Ben and Gwyneth Go Behind the Scenes, and additional scene-specific commentary with director Don Roos and actors Ben Affleck and Gwyneth Paltrow. (Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz)

If you're a fan of rom-coms/Ben/Gwyn, then you'll probably enjoy this movie. Otherwise, stay well away.

Rating:
Summary: Failed Chick Flick
Review: There's not much to recommend this movie. There's no real chemistry between Ben Affleck and Gwyneth Paltrow, which is a shame because they're both talented actors, and they've both proven they can do romance. They just don't do it here. In fact, there's so little connection it's obvious they're just reading scripted lines. In the end, it's neither their fault, nor the writers: the lines are all right, and they're read well, but there's just no chemistry.

There are only two major failures with this movie, but they're doozies: the characters and the plot concept. The characters fail to grow on viewers despite all the standard awkward situations they're put into to create sympathy. Affleck's guilt over Paltrow's husband seems contrived, rather than genuine or understandable. He is a sterotypical villain, ready, even eager, to prey on others. Even his career is sterotypical: he an ad exec; of course he's a horrible human being. His character fails: a flat-character bad guy that almost, but not quite, becomes a likeable guy. His guilt and self-loathing seem contrived. Paltrow's character fails as well: you sometimes feel sorry for her, but never really sympathize.

The other major failure is the plot twist. The only redeeming factor is the that-could-have-been-me factor, which is given away in the trailers and not developed in the movie. If they had spent more time developing his character around that, and not forcing him to persue Paltrow's character, this movie might have been saved. Instead, they use it as a cheap plot device, and throw it away.

There's not even anything to qualify it as a decent chick-flick- there's nothing to sigh about at the end, you never say "just say yes, you twit! Can't you see he loves you?". It's a little too much like watching a very boring episode of Springer, minus any redeeming drama.

Rating:
Summary: A Strange Turn of Events
Review: Bounce (PG-13)- I either love or hate Gwyneth Paltrow and in this movie I loved her. But alas, I can't say the same for the movie itself. How Don Roos, the acidic genius of The Opposite of Sex could have written this drivel is beyond me. Ben Affleck proves yet again that he has taken over Richard Gere's reign as the most over rated heart throb working in Hollywood. Quite a feat given that Mr. Gere is still making movies! We have seen this story a million times and there is nothing entertaining or original enough this time around to keep you from doing anything but wait for the predictable last reel to finally thread up.

Rating:
Summary: A very good and simply well made movie, so real!
Review: Hola! Hello there! I just saw this movie a couple days ago and get catched by it. It was simple, well made, refreshing, romantic, with a couple of excellent actors! I don?t know if Ben and Gwyneth were dating at that time but their acting looked very real, how they looked and kissed each other, i have seen other movies with them in other couples and i saw something different, i don?t know if it was only me catched by the picture, but they were so real and natural. The movie presents a common theme in an uncommon situation, just out of cliche. "Bounce" makes remember that you just keep the faith that outhere is someone that can make your heart "bounce" again, maybe when you don?t expect it. The Soundtrack is awesome too, i don?t know why some people didn?t like the movie, it just so simple and real that you only have to sit and enjoy it. You will also love it if you really like Ben and/or Gwyneth. Very good acting, they looked very cute!