Bounce

(12, 106 minutes)

'BOUNCE' conjures images of a happy, light Friday night comedy. This Bounce has all the spring of a dog-punctured tennis ball.

Former real-life lovers Ben Affleck and Gwyneth Paltrow, whose romance was as on and off as a channel-hopper's TV viewing habits, have re-united for a movie as indecisive as their relationship. Is it a romantic comedy? No, but the sarcastic Affleck thinks he's funny. Is it a love story? Yes, but no. Is it romantic? Never. Call it a drama, if you insist, but there isn't enough and all of it is contrived, unbelievable and lifeless.

It takes a plane crash to bring cardboard Ben and whiny Gwyn together in Bounce. Affleck switches on his narrow, catwalk acting style in the role of Buddy, a smooth, smug advertising company executive whose reckless drinking and womanising habits come crashing down around him one fateful, snow-blitzed Christmas night.

He foregoes his seat on the last plane home in favour of a 'layover' with an accommodating Natasha Henstridge, giving his ticket to new acquaintance Greg (Tony Goldwyn), a writer desperate to see his wife, Abby (Paltrow) and two children. The plane goes down; final curtains for playwright Greg; now Buddy and Abby must bounce back in their own ways. For Buddy that means checking into rehab for a year and then, still suffused with guilt, looking up real-estate agent Abby. From strangers to lovers their path goes, but when will Buddy tell her the truth about the past?

That dilemma is less interesting than watching the lack of bounce between the leads: it is immediately apparent they are spent forces in each other's company. Surely, writer-director Don Roos, in his first movie since the tart and savvy comedy The Opposite Of Sex, would realise this casting was the opposite of sexy. Past history ensured Ben and Gwyn were never going find one another maddeningly irresistible in the manner of Taylor and Burton or Coward's incorrigible lovers in Private Lives, Elyot and Amanda. That's why Bounce never gets off the ground.