The Big Bounce

Let the theatres swindle you out of some money for these movies. STARSKY & HUTCH–I’ve never seen a single episode of this show, but I’m betting that it was nothing like this movie is going to be. With Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller in the title roles, it’s going to be a pretty broad comedy with a little bit of espionage thrown in. With Todd Phillips at the helm it’s going to be a REALLY broad comedy with little else involved. And with Snoop Dogg as Huggy Bear, well, at least they got THAT casting right.

I’m on top of it, though. Vince Vaughn plays the bad guy and that’s enough to get me to at least rent this one. He’s a great comedic bad guy. And Fred Williamson plays the Captain. Yep. I’m there. It looks pretty funny, too, so that’ll help.

WELCOME TO MOOSEPORT–Do studio execs actually think that Ray Romano can carry a movie? Make him the main character’s best friend (or the voice of an animated mastodon), not the focus of the whole movie. This looks like total ass. Yeah, it also stars Gene Hackman and Maura Tierney, but I seriously doubt that they’re enough to save this piecer. As one of my viewing buddies said, “This looks about as bad as an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond.”

Embarrassing all around.

DIRTY DANCING: HAVANA NIGHTS–I sure do like those kids from Y Tu Mama Tambien, but Diego Luna doesn’t exactly seem to know what he’s doing with his career. Yeah, Open Range was a pretty good western, but he didn’t get to do very much in it. But Vampires: Los Muertos? This piece of crap?

The first movie was a national phenomenon. That’s too bad because it sucks so much ass. This one will fail hard even with Swayze doing a cameo. Remember Grease 2? Didn’t think so. Sorry, Diego. Try again later.

Now, let’s get to that bouncing bathing suit.

Hawaii is beautiful. No doubt about that. The ocean, the mountains, the beaches…there’s just nothing ugly about that state.

Sara Foster is beautiful. Not doubt about that. The hills, the valleys…there’s just nothing ugly about that girl.

That’s what I learned from The Big Bounce. There really wasn’t a whole lot left to the movie. Just lots of lingering shots of those two characters: Hawaii and Sara Foster.

That’s too bad, because this is an Elmore Leonard story, so I’m sure it actually HAS a story! And I’m sure it’s a good one.

From what I could make out, this is the story of Jack Ryan (Owen Wilson….and, no, not THAT Jack Ryan. In fact, I didn’t even realize his name was Ryan until I looked him on up IMDb.), an amateur thief who makes his way to Hawaii after “semi-retiring.” There he starts working for Ray Ritchie (Gary Sinise), a mostly evil developer who wants to put a bunch of native Hawaiians out of their land to build yet another high-rise vacation spot. This doesn’t sit too well with Walter Crewes (Morgan Freeman), the District Judge and owner of a set of bungalows in the shadow of Ray’s proposed hotel.

One day, when the protesters stop work on the building, Jack accidentally gets into a fight with one of Ray’s flunkys (Vinnie Jones) and hits him with a baseball bat. This gets the attention of Walter who hires Jack to work on his bungalows. Jack then gets entwined with Ray’s mistress, Nancy (ex-model Sara Foster) and they start a fun little affair. Then Nancy wants him to help her steal $20,000 from Ray and things get complicated. Meanwhile, Ray’s other flunky, Bob, Jr. (Charlie Sheen) is getting in the way of everybody and wants Nancy all to himself.

Follow me? Somewhere in between is a dominoes game between Morgan, Owen, Willie Nelson and Harry Dean Stanton. (That scene was pretty fun.) Oh, and Bebe Neuwirth is Ray’s wife.

With that many characters and only a 107 minute running time there’s no chance to really get to know any of them. Yeah, we kind of care about Jack because Owen Wilson is one charming mutha and we kind of care about Walter because Morgan is a great actor who can make any piece of crap worthy of caring about. But everyone else is just cardboard that isn’t even strong enough to hang a lei on.

There is some good dialogue that seems to come straight from Leonard’s novel (I’ve never read a single page that he’s written, but I’ve always wanted to…love some of the movies that have been made of his stuff.), but some of it is just kind of dumb. And I have a feeling that Owen was ad-libbing a lot of it. None of his dialogue sounded much like Leonard. It was funny, but it was Owen, not Elmore.

This movie was a total disappointment. It seemed like the writer, Sebastian Gutierrez (Gothika, Judas Kiss and She Creature), was only interested in finding places for Jack and Nancy to have sex, but wasn’t very interested in the heist itself. That only took up about 15 minutes of screen time at the very end. The rest of the movie was the young couple bouncing from place to place trying to get it on.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

The acting was alright, but I was a little annoyed that Gary Sinise was relegated to a virtual cameo. The guy’s a great actor and he doesn’t seem to be able to star in his own movies any more. He was finished shooting this one in about five minutes. And he’s got about 10 minutes of screen time!

Too bad about this one. I’m always up for a good Elmore adaptation. But this wasn’t it. Rent Out Of Sight, Jackie Brown or Get Shorty again. Those are the classics.