Random DVD Round-Up 5 - THE BOUNTY HUNTER

Andy Tennant (FOOL'S GOLD, HITCH, SWEET HOME ALABAMA) is a seeming one-man factory in churning out romantic-comedies pinned on an implausible central conceit. In this risible flick, the conceit is that Gerard Butler is a bail bonds-man with a gambling habit, charged to bring his ex-wife (Jennifer Aniston) to jail. She's been had up on a fender-bender charge, but was too busy to turn up to court because she's a hard-nosed investigative journalist. ((rolls eyes)). The resulting "comedy" should play as a screwball caper with two wise-cracking stars wheeling their way through organised crime and driving through America. What actually happens is that the two romantic leads have zero chemistry and the creaky, paper-thin plot can't compensate. The only way to watch this flick is on fast-forward - and if I tell you I watched the whole thing in the "flight-safe" window of a fifty minute AMS-LCY flight, you'll get what I mean.

Additional tags: Sarah Thorp, Oliver Bokelberg, 

THE BOUNTY HUNTER was released in Spring 2010 and is available to rent/buy.

FOOL'S GOLD - when Matthew McConaughey's naked torso isn't enough

FOOL'S GOLD is a rather bland romantic-adventure-comedy along the lines of Matthew McConaughey's last vehicle SAHARA. This time, he's reunited with Kate Hudson of HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN 10 DAYS fame. The two are suitably bronzed and buff, and charm their way through a laughably under-written (but sadly not laugh-provoking) treasure hunt in the West Indies. McConaughey plays his typical slacker character and Hudson plays his History PhD(!) ex-wife. They team up to hunt for Spanish treasure, roping in Hudson's ueber-rich British boss (Donald Sutherland), his air-heard daughter (Alexis Dziena) and an inexplicably Ukrainian side-kick (the Scot, Ewan Bremner). The baddies are a bunch of goons including Theo Huxtable; led by Ray Winstone with a piss-poor Texan accent; and financed by a spoof gangster rapper called Bigg (sic) Bunny.

Director Andy Tennant (HITCH) fails to make this movie sparkle. It's a long way off the best of the genre - namely, Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito in ROMANCING THE STONE. And the after-school special sub-plot in which the bimbo daughter is lectured by Kate Hudson's character is entirely obnoxious. Studios should take note: as wonderful as Matthew McConaughey's naked torso is, it's nowhere near enough to sustain an audience's interest for 2 hours.

All in all, FOOL'S GOLD is one for DVD at best.

FOOL'S GOLD was released earlier this year in Australia, the US, Singapore, Mexico, Argentina, South Korea, Brazil, the Philippones, Thailand, Turkey, Hong Kong, Kuwait, Russia, Estonia, Iceland, Chile, Hungary, Israel, Panama and Egypt. It is currently on release in the UK, Poland and Slovakia. It opens later in April in the Czech Republic, Germany, Spain, Belgium, France and Norway. It opens on May 1st in the Netherlands, on June 14th in Japan and on June 20th in Finland.

HITCH - formulaic rom-com saved by Will Smith

HITCH is a paint-by-numbers romantic-comedy featuring Will Smith and Eva Mendes, Kevin James and Carmen Diaz-lite, Amber Valetta. Smith plays a “date doctor” who specialises in coaching men with low self-esteem on how to appear attractive to their dream-women. He is helping the earnest, sweet, but unattractive Kevin-James-character win the misunderstood social butterfly Amber-Valetta-character over. Cue lots of “odd couple” type jokes. Meanwhile he is also wooing the Eva-Mendes character. This chick has a lot of trust issues, and is also the gossip columnist who exposes the James-Valetta relationship. Cue lots of comedy-misunderstandings.

Now, I have nothing against romantic comedies per se. It just so happens that the majority of romantic-comedies produced by Hollywood studios are formulaic superficial nonsense, usually designed as vehicles for some cute star and directed by a talentless hack. In addition, they mostly have plots that rely on key members of the cast forming ridiculous misunderstandings of each other’s motives and actions that in the real world would be cleared up in a second, but in the tortuous world of celluloid dating take a more marketable ninety minutes to unravel. In the case of HITCH, the hack director is Andy Tennant, who seems to specialise in these disposable comedies. (I submit that monstrously flawed Reese Witherspoon-Josh Lucas vehicle, SWEET HOME ALABAMA into evidence for the prosecution.)

Having said all this, I actually rather enjoyed HITCH and that is down to one factor alone: Will Smith. It is testament to how charming Will Smith is that he can single-handedly sell you a movie that is the utterly formulaic. In fact, he is so charming that he can almost makes us believe that men would actually pay the “date doctor” to learn cheesy lines like, “life is not the amount of breaths you take, it's the moments that take your breath away.” Or that women would be impressed by lines like: “Never lie, steal, cheat, or drink. But if you must lie, lie in the arms of the one you love. If you must steal, steal away from bad company. If you must cheat, cheat death. And if you must drink, drink in the moments that take your breath away.” As you can see from these *choice* quotations, HITCH is a really schmaltzy movie. Its appeal rests solely on casting Will Smith in the lead role. I think that alone just about saves it from the trashcan of cinematic history. But, it’s a close call.

HITCH is already on release in the US, Germany and Austria and opens in the UK today. It opens in France next week.