Friday, April 9, 2010
By Audrey McKenzie
Staff Writer
If you’re into the quintessential cheesy rom-com genre that seems to have infiltrated the film industry today, “The Bounty Hunter” is the perfect movie for you. It is chock full of poor, bland acting and tasteless humor that will leave you with only one thought: I just wasted ten bucks and an hour and forty-five minutes of my life.
The movie chronicles an unusual weekend in the lives of a recently-divorced couple. Milo Boyd (Gerard Butler) is an ex-cop who has now become a bounty hunter. His ex-wife, Nicole Hurley (Jennifer Aniston), is a reporter for the Daily News.
She gets into a minor car accident and must appear in court. She becomes distracted by a tip for an intriguing story and misses her court appearance. She skips bail and Milo receives the task of tracking her down and hauling her to jail.
The storyline of the movie is about as unoriginal as one can imagine. The whole movie essentially revolves around the twisted romance of Milo and Nicole. The two are a disgustingly stereotypical recently-divorced couple who are coincidentally forced to be around each other again and realize that they don’t hate each other as much as they thought. It is just about the most clichéd plotline out there.
The acting in this film was incredibly bland, although humorous at times. Gerard Butler brought absolutely no life to Milo’s character. His portrayal was cold and lacked any visceral effort. But in a few brief scenes in the movie, he has viewers laughing out loud. These select moments come few and far between.
Jennifer Aniston is equally dull and lacks almost all sense of emotion. As a result, her character is not relatable in the least. Aniston has even less instances of humor than Butler. Her whole performance seems incredibly lackluster and stiff.
The poor acting combined with the awful lack of character development in this film make for incredibly flat characters. Viewers see almost absolutely no depth in the characters. The internal conflicts of the Milo and Nicole are hardly even grazed over, and any chance of a bit of depth in this film is completely lost.
The soundtrack to this film was quite odd and not very fitting with the story. The songs seemed effortlessly thrown together with little thought to their significance, or lack thereof, to the story or a scene in the film.
Songs such as “Miss Independent” by Kelly Clarkson and “Your Love is My Drug” by Ke$ha are awkwardly placed in unfitting scenes. The tone of the songs selected often did not seem to match the tone of the scene and did not seem at all appropriate.
There are few, if any, redeeming qualities about this movie, and hence few reasons to waste your time and money going to see it.
However, if you are willing to risk it and go to see the film for the possibility of a few laughs, “The Bounty Hunter” is rated PG-13 and is playing nationwide.
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