The Big Bounce

Critics for the most part are giving The Big Bounce just that. The second film incarnation of an Elmore Leonard novel (the first was released in 1969 with Ryan O'Neal and Leigh Taylor-Young in the lead roles) is being faulted -- ironically, given its source material -- for its script. The movie doesn't work, writes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. It meanders and drifts and riffs. Lou Lumenick observes in the New York Post: This is the kind of movie so laid-back it waits until the last 10 minutes to disclose most of the plot. Ty Burr in the Boston Globe calls it all wink and no substance. Gene Seymour in Newsday figures that it's really all an experimental film, noting, Given the talent involved on both sides of the camera and its sturdy literary pedigree, there's no way a movie could be this doughy and airy unless it was somehow by design. A few critics find it difficult to come down too hard on the movie, however. Jamie Bernard in the New York Daily News regards it as an opportunity to while away 88 undemanding minutes in [star Owen] Wilson's amusing company. Michael Wilmington in the Chicago Tribune even goes so far as to compare it with a frosty tropical drink -- refreshing and icy-cool, a sinful pleasure mixed by experts. Still other critics, however, are not reluctant to pummel it. The Toronto Star's Peter Howell, for example, writes: How bad does a movie set in Hawaii have to be to make a frozen Canadian not want to see it during the worst weather week of the winter? This bad: Given a choice between shoveling my driveway or going to see The Big Bounce again, I would choose the driveway.