Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.0

Bounce Blu-ray Movie Review

The flight not taken.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 9, 2012

Robert Frost immortalized the human condition with regard to inevitable choices every person must make at some point in their lives in his legendary poem “The Road Not Takne”. Broadway composer – lyricist Stephen Sondheim covered much the same territory in his beautiful song of regret and realization in his “The Road You Didn’t Take” from Follies. In both of these cases, Frost and Sondheim seek to generalize out from one (or more) apparently inconsequential decisions to say something about divergent potential realties that remain forever out of reach once that very decision has been made. We’re all confronted with myriad decisions, picayune to immense, throughout our lives, but rarely does a single decision have completely devastating consequences for most individuals. Putting aside those who willfully harm another human being, relatively few people even experience inadvertently harming another human being, at least to the extent that it could cause emotional distress on the part of the harmer. Most of these incidents might be categorized under the general idea of “accidents”, but what might be the repercussions if a completely innocent seeming decision actually resulted in the death of another person? That conceit is what sets the plot in motion in Bounce, an unapologetically three-hankie weep-fest that posits Ben Affleck as a womanizing ad executive who in the midst of a debilitating blizzard that is threatening to quickly shut down Chicago’s O:Hare airport gives his airplane ticket to a happily married man who is eager to get home to his wife and kids for some pre-Christmas celebrating. Affleck’s character spends the night with another stranded passenger but awakens to media activity outside his hotel window, and turns on the television to discover the flight he was supposed to be on has crashed in Kansas, killing everyone aboard.

Buddy Amaral (Ben Affleck) may be about to go through something akin to the seven stages of grief, even if he’s not personally bereaved by the loss of the stranger named Greg Janello (played by Tony Goldwyn) to whom he gave his ticket, but his first thought is covering his tracks, since he conspired with a friendly ticket counter clerk (Jennifer Grey) with whom he’s obviously had a long running dalliance to get Janello on the flight without taking Buddy’s already checked luggage off first, something that is a huge breach of security protocol in this post-9/11 world. Buddy’s intentions were obviously noble (or at least mostly noble—he had eyes on another woman the night before and in fact ends up sleeping with her during the “layover”), the consequences are obviously devastating.

Bounce then, well, bounces to a heart wrenching episode featuring Greg’s wife Abby (Gwyneth Paltrow), who goes through several agonizing hours of not knowing if her husband was actually on the doomed flight. The first manifest has Buddy’s name on it, but due to Buddy’s machinations with the ticketing agent, finally Greg’s name appears and Abby realizes she’s a widow, one with two young boys to support.

The film then takes one of several too pat turns, as Buddy tries to drown his burgeoning guilt, especially after the ad agency he works for is hired to help rehabilitate the airline’s reputation after the horrible crash. Bounce has Buddy pretty much go overnight from decent, if somewhat duplicitous, young man to a wreck of an alcoholic, to a half hearted 12-step aficionado. It plays ingenuously because it is ingenuous, especially after the film then takes another pat step by having Buddy decide to track down Greg’s widow to make sure she’s okay. This is about the unlikeliest setup for a romantic tryst ever, but writer-director Don Roos works the heart tugging element of two wounded characters, each with their own secret, to expected ends, if also predictable means to those ends. Why have Paltrow’s Abby claim she’s divorced? Why have Affleck’s Buddy refuse to admit why he’s there? For no good reason other than to extend the melodrama until the tearful third act, of course.

Affleck is simply out of his dramatic element here, struggling mightily to give Buddy some shadings of guilt and remorse tinged with incipient hope for the future, but too often he simply looks like he’s passing an uncomfortably large kidney stone. Paltrow is nominally better in what is a pretty shoddily written role, one which substitutes schtick like manic lighting of cigarettes (never fully smoked) in place of actual character development. The two stars coast by on their considerable charisma, but the film is a haphazard amalgamation of half formed ideas and plot points, two pat for its own good while also dancing around some kind of unseemly issues like someone more or less stalking the survivor of a horrible tragedy, no matter what his supposedly good intentions.

Bounce shoots itself in the foot repeatedly, perhaps nowhere more obviously than in the third act, when (as might be expected) Abby discovers Buddy’s connection to her husband. That leads to a falling out (again predictable), but then Roos brings in a silly civil trial against the airline that Buddy testifies in, giving him a little tearful soliloquoy where he gets to apologize to Abby on national television, of course with Abby herself watching from her kitchen, also teary-eyed. It’s just downright ridiculous, and it undercuts what at times is a fairly affecting piece of storytelling. The tacked on coda seems completely rote, there for the probably largely female audience to whom this project was no doubt aimed, a quasi-happily ever after that ignores all of the tragedy and turbulence that has gone before.

Bounce Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Bounce is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate and Miramax with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. Once again the weirdly inconsistent tendency of these Miramax catalog releases continues; after the recent lackluster Kate and Leopold, we now get the largely stellar looking Bounce. Colors are nicely saturated and the overall image is very nicely defined and detailed throughout this high definition presentation. Some of the outside location photography suffers from just slight softness when compared to the more controlled interior sequences. Fine detail is quite good in the film's ubiquitous close-ups. Black levels are consistent, grain looks natural and is largely unobtrusive and shadow detail remains generally strong in some of the dimmer moments.

Bounce Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Bounce features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround mix that suffices perfectly well for this film's rather limited sonic ambitions. There are some very occasional nice sound effects dotting the surrounds—including the jolting bumping sound indicating the impending air disaster—but overall this is a pretty quiet film driven by dialogue scenes usually between two or three people. Fidelity is excellent, with dialogue presented very cleanly, and the film's underscore and source cues sound just fine in this lossless rendering. There's nothing here that screams audiophile extravaganza, but of course that's to be expected in a romantic drama like Bounce.

Bounce Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Feature Commentary with Writer/Director Don Roos and Co-Producer Bobby Cohen. This is a fairly low key but quite informative commentary that is also surprisingly funny at times (Cohen insists that "reshoot" implies the filmmakers don't know what they're doing while "additional photography" sounds so much more planned). The two are nicely conversational together but manage to get into quite a bit of information about character, the writing process and some of the technical aspects of the filming.


• Deleted Scenes with Optional Commentary by Writer/Director Don Roos and Co-Producer Bobby Cohen (SD; 47:13). There's quite a bit of supplemental material here, though several of these scenes are mere snippets. As is usually the case with deleted material, most of these scenes provide little character beats but don't really contribute to the forward momentum of the plot.


• "Need to Be Next to You" Music Video (SD; 3:33) features Leigh Nash.


• All About Bounce (SD; 22:55) is an On the Set television featurette that is a pretty standard puff piece promoting the film. There are the requisite interview segments with cast and crew along with copious footage from the film.


• Ben and Gwyneth Go Behind the Scenes (SD; 22:06) has Affleck interviewing Roos (who has some slightly politically incorrect jokes about being gay right off the bat), then we move on to Paltrow interviewing the Boom Operator of the film. This ping ponging continues with a wide variety of behind the scenes crew members getting subjected to "star" interviews. This is interesting stuff for those who want a little more information on the nuts and bolts side of filmmaking, at least with regard to the actual people who do often unrecognized jobs.


• Gag Reel (SD; 5:41)


• Selected Scenes and Audio Commentary with Director Don Roos and Actors Ben Affleck and Gwyneth Paltrow (SD; 44:19). It's kind of odd that these snippets are presented separately from the main feature. This is kind of chatty, not especially informative (and it sounds like Paltrow is eating something, at least in the early going), but it's agreeable enough and should be enjoyed by the stars' fans.

Bounce Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Fans of Affleck and especially Paltrow may have the patience to make it through the rather slow and artificial slog that Bounce offers. This is a film with too many pat elements, and a kind of disturbing subtext that is really never adequately addressed. Those who are squeamish about flying (and I count myself among them) might want to think twice about watching the film, since a devastating airline disaster plays such a major role in the plot. This Blu-ray looks and sounds fine, and the release does offer an above average assortment of supplementary features. Fans of the film should be well pleased with this release; others may want to consider a rental first.