Review: The Rebound (15)***

Sandy (Catherine Zeta-Jones) sees her marriage go down the pan courtesy of a video camera, which captures her husband doing something unsavoury with one of her friends at a kids' party.
By The Newsroom
Published 23rd Jul 2010, 14:16 BST
Updated 23rd Jul 2010, 14:16 BST

Soon Sandy is a single New York mum looking for a job and a babysitter. What she winds up with is a perfect model of New Man in the guise of a twentysomething guy (Justin Bartha) recently dumped by his own true love.

Naturally – and undoubtedly according to the laws of Hollywood scriptwriting – she and the babysitter Aram become

an item.

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A formulaic rom-com with a twist, The Rebound offers little in the way of originality. Instead, it throws up a couple of laugh-out-loud moments and seems to be whispering that, whatever life may throw at us, it will always work itself out in the end.

Bartha is merely the foil for Zeta-Jones's evolution from victim to go-getting career mum. Nonetheless, he scores as a broken-hearted sensitive guy who watches French movies, pines for his lost Gallic love and becomes the perfect surrogate dad for his 40-year-old employer's kids.

At its most rudimentary The Rebound is that hoary old tale of older girl meets younger boy, girl loses boy and girl (possibly) wins boy back again. Nevertheless writer/director Bart Freundlich has a giggle with the format and wins over undemanding devotees of such fluff in the process.

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