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Talk about a timely fable. Tired of delayed takeoffs, surly attendants, rising fares, and antisocial seating arrangements? Go see this movie, and you’ll come away with a fresh appreciation for the airline industry; apparently we’ve been grossly misinformed to complain so. It seems that, the later your flight is running, the more likely you are to have a chance one-nighter with Natasha Henstridge, give your ticket to a guy who will die in your place when the plane crashes, earn accolades for the p.r. mop-up, then woo the dead guy’s wife when your inevitable guilt turns to love.
Ben Affleck plays a self-centered, womanizing L.A. adslinger who gets triply lucky after a weather delay in Chicago finds him quick to swap tickets when Nat bats her eyelashes at him in the airport bar. Then the flight augurs into a Kansas field (why are there so many movies about airline accidents? come on, how about some variety – like a sinkhole opening under a cheerleader camp, or an overturned Klan hayride) and his agency wins an award for the airline’s post-traumatic damage control campaign. But he turns alcoholic from conscience, and winds up in rehab. Upon graduation he tracks down the widow (Gwyneth Paltrow), and they have an initially reluctant but eventually really talky courtship until she finds out who he is.
Bounce is reasonably well-acted, as you might expect. Affleck has that natural unadulterated sincerity thing going that would look bored on other people but always works pretty well for him, and The Gwyneth is refreshing in a rare unglamorous, non-blonde turn. But the plot relies overly on the classic Damning Secret device that’s been popular at least since the Austen sisters took up quill and ink. You know, where he’s kept the truth from her but decides to tell before it’s too late, then she finds out on her own through some deux ex machina twist and things fall apart, not coming together again until she sees him testify on Court TV. The usual.
So it ain’t exactly first-class. It is fun to see Jennifer Grey in a supporting role, her biggest post-nosejob part to date. And Johnny Galecki, who is best known as David from “Roseanne” but was also in writer/director Don Roos’ last film The Opposite of Sex, is good in another co-starring bit. The predominant feeling I came away with, though, is that nothing exciting, good or bad, thankfully or otherwise, ever happens to me when I fly. Unless you count the time I saw a guy have a heart attack after drinking the water at Atlanta Hartsfield (no lie). C+
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