| Overall Grade: |
C+ |
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| Story: |
B- |
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| Acting: |
C+ |
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| Direction: |
C- |
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| Visuals: |
C+ |
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Another Mediocre Film by Carr
by Chris (movies profile)
Mar 12, 2006
6
of
11 people found this review helpful
In ''Rebound," Martin Lawrence plays Roy McCormick, a conceited basketball coach who deigns to train a team of middle school pipsqueaks after a freak tantrum during a game results in his expulsion from college sports. The kids are grossly unskilled, though not for long. The movie, meanwhile, remains painless but dull throughout.
Coach Roy winds up at his alma mater, a hapless underfunded public school, whose wry principal (Megan Mullally) is all too happy to have him. But the music teacher and mother of one of the players (Wendy Raquel Robinson) voices her objections: He's a maniac who could go off on the kids. So the principal has the concerned parent mind the crazy coach.
As it happens, Coach Roy isn't nuts, he's lazy, sending the kids playing for the Mt. Vernon Smelters into competition sinfully unprepared. While they shoot bricks, he reads the newspaper, having been unaware that that particular afternoon was indeed a game day. But his lax attitude in his new job is ruining any shot he has at regaining his old job in the college ranks. It's not until those prospective job offers dry up and his complimentary Escalade is repossessed that Coach Roy catches some Smelters spirit.
If only it were contagious. ''Rebound" is about as unmotivated as Coach Roy, doing nothing to distinguish itself from any other movie ever made about winless teams that learn to stop losing.
The movie takes care of any significant obstacles to triumph. The Smelters go from scoreless games to blowouts with amazing ease. Everything here comes easily. The movie could have had a much better time building the otherwise predictable romantic tension between Lawrence and the expressive Robinson, who could have a long career as the new Sheryl Lee Ralph. But the writing doesn't break a sweat trying. He's single. So is she.
It's the kids that keep the film afloat. There are seven on the Smelters and two extremely enjoyable girls keeping stats and providing color commentary. None seems especially trained, though they take to their roles with charm and flailing arms. Tara Correa, the young lady who plays Big Mac, a juvie veteran and the team's sole girl, has a sweet and engagingly mischievous face. Even Steven Anthony Lawrence, the congested-looking boy who plays Ralph (a character who, couldn't you guess it, vomits a lot), overcomes a silly part with professionalism, which Steve Carr's clumsy direction sorely lacks.
Carr previously brought us such equally mediocre entertainments as ''Doctor Doolittle 2" and ''Daddy Day Care," Eddie Murphy vehicles that found the comedian stuck in a thankless PG phase. It's a less natural fit for Lawrence, who often looks bewildered. And he should: He's just not believable as a family-movie man. |
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