Coach Roy (MARTIN LAWRENCE) once was college basketball's top mastermind. But lately his attentions have been on his next endorsements, not on his next game. What's more, Roy's temper has run amuck, leading to his being banned from college ball until he can "demonstrate compliance" – in other words, not explode every time he walks onto the court. Roy waits – and waits – for a suitable coaching offer, but he receives only one: a hastily scribbled fax from… members of the Mount Vernon Junior High School "Smelters"* basketball squad. Roy reluctantly accepts the "offer," hoping that a few weeks at the school will prove his good intentions and restore him to his high-living ways as a celebrated college coach. But when "old school" meets "middle school," Coach Roy doesn't know what hit him. The boys are hapless, possessing little athletic skill and virtually no grasp of the fundamentals of basketball. Roy's first game as the Smelters' coach sees the team losing 0-109. And it looks like things are going only downhill from there. That is, until Roy decides to teach his young charges some new concepts… like passing, rebounding, dribbling, and scoring. As Roy's coaching magic takes the Smelters to a new place – the winning side of the scoreboard – he finds something long thought lost: his love of the game. *smelter: one who is engaged in the smelting industry, melting or fusing ores in order to separate the metallic components. -- © 20th Century Fox

I admit it, I like movies. A film that transports me to see things in a different way, or inspires me, or explores deep and complex questions where the language of cinema can transcend the limitations of words and other media.

But some people I know don't think like that. What's worse, they're not stupid or uneducated or lacking in taste. They just expect a movie to entertain. Much like food stops you being hungry. You go in the cinema, buy some overpriced sweets, sit down, and switch off your brain. Simple. Maybe they've had a long day. Maybe they're on a date. Maybe they just fancied a night out. They don't care too much about the movie as long as it's easily digestible, starts and finishes at a convenient time, and has free parking nearby.

Is that so wrong? It doesn't even have to be that good, it just has to tick some boxes. A bit like this one.

The Rebound is a light romcom where Sandy (Catherine Zeta Jones) is a beautiful, smart, suburban 40-year-old mother who discovers her husband is cheating on her and takes her two children to New York City for a fresh start. She gets a new job and meets Aram, a sweet twenty four year-old graduate who's at a low point in his life - he found out his French wife of two weeks duped him into marrying so she could get a green card. Aram works at a coffee-shop but is great at babysitting. Eventually the inevitable happens and they hit it off despite the age-differences.

The style has similarities to Sex and the City in pacing and heavy sprinkling of sexual innuendos, but really succeeds around Catherine Zeta-Jones, who soon reminds us she is an Oscar-rated actress even in this most undemanding of roles. Justin Bartha is reasonably amusing as Aram. The other characters are more two-dimensional. Zeta-Jones commands the stage and has some nice fluffiness for us to contemplate meaningfully as we search for the car park ticket on the way out. "I think what's endearing and universal to the piece is that divorce and break-ups don't just happen to women and neither do the emotions that come out of them. The Rebound shows us these events and emotions also happen to men. I also like what the script says about relationships. When they break up everyone thinks there's no hope in hell that you will find love again, but you can."

I am a bit at a loss to explain why a woman who can act, sing and dance as well as Catherine Zeta Jones should put herself through such silliness, but she is quick to explain. "My character goes through this horrific dating process and I've heard countless stories from my girlfriends who are the same age are in this position. When you're married you think your life is complete forever, then you get divorced and you have to start over again and go out into the marketplace, for want of a better word. At some point you just have to laugh at all these situations that happen when your life turns around on a dime and The Rebound helps us see this."

That is just so horrific and I feel deeply moved. I'll get the giant popcorn next time. But to be fair, unlike Sex and the City where males are mere bit-players in the big scheme of things, Aram could strike a chord with any guy that would love to fancy his chances with a woman that is of a considerably different age and richer than he is. Never mind if you can't take her out and pay pay pay in the style she 'deserves' – just go to a really awful theatre where your terrible acting friends are producing a boring play. Being a dream lady, she will not only sit through attentively, be polite to your geeky friends, but practically eat your face off on the dance floor afterwards.

You become parted irrevocably but, as Catherine says, your life will suddenly turn on a dime and the fairy godmother of happy endings will make everything right before you have to get home for the babysitter. Don't tell anyone, but I enjoyed it. I know I shouldn't . . .

This was such a great film! Storyline was fantastic, acting was superb, and they look like such a cute couple! This movie is really heart warming, knowing that this does happen to people everyday is pretty sad. A wonderful romantic-comedy that I would love to watch again. Recommended 10/10 Enjoy everyone!

When I was a kid I played in junior league baseball. To be honest, it never really held my interest. While I wasn’t exactly a kid who played just because my dad wanted me to, sports just weren’t my thing. Maybe if we had been total underdogs with a wacky array of characters I would have been more into it. Alas, just another example of life not being like the movies.

Of course, in Rebound that might not be a bad thing, since even though it has the screwball characters on an underdog team, it’s just not that interesting. It’s not about baseball (which in my mind is one of the slowest most boring sports out there) but instead focuses on the fast paced world of kid’s basketball. Even a faster paced sport doesn’t help though, as Rebound is so locked into the formula for an underdog kid’s sports movie that you can’t help but feel you’ve seen this movie before, and probably done better than it is here.

In Rebound Martin Lawrence plays “Coach Roy”, one of the biggest names in college basketball. Unfortunately for Roy he’s bought into his own hype and spends less time actually coaching his basketball team and more time working on his endorsement deals and garnering technical fouls for yelling at referees. When Roy is ejected from yet another game, he throws a fit and accidentally ends up killing the bird mascot of the opposing team. The college decides they're through with his antics and cans him, but thanks to the fast work of Roy’s PR agent (Breckin Meyer), Roy gets another chance to prove himself with whatever team he can find. In this case the team is from Roy’s old junior high school, a bunch of misfits who wrote to Roy for help as a longshot and just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

As a underdog kid’s sports movie, Rebound becomes painfully predictable. You know at first Roy will be a jerk, focused more on saving his career than actually helping the kids, although later he’ll be able to offer wisdom the character never appeared to have to help his team win. You know Roy will eventually find aid for the team in the local bully, who is really kind hearted inside. You know the kid who hasn’t made a shot yet will eventually make the winning basket in the final game, and somewhere in there will be some kind of romance with one of the player’s parents. The plot is so obvious you have no choice but to turn to the acting for the entertainment.

Of course, the problem there is that the acting isn’t really good. We have a bunch of colorful characters, but unlike other movies of this type, the focus really isn’t on the kids. Martin Lawrence is the one in the spotlight, though he is almost always at his best when he’s acting against another talented actor. The film's collection of moppet children and B-list television actors aren’t really enough to help out, so the movie just looks like an attempt by Lawrence to convince the audience that the talents that gave him a successful television show should earn him a movie career as well. As in his old tv show, Lawrence even has a brief appearance as a second character in the movie to show his versatility, but since the appearance is so brief, and the character is completely unneeded, it’s a wasted attempt, just like most of the movie. Instead Lawrence slurs his way through the role like a man who needed alcohol to make it through each day stuck with these kids. If that’s the case, he should admit it in an interview somewhere so the audience doesn’t feel guilty using alcohol to make it through his movie.

Rebound is little more than the newest entry in a long line of underdog children’s sports movies, a genre that is beginning to feel less and less like an actual genre, and more like the exact same movie remade over and over again. In fact, my screening for Rebound included the trailer for the upcoming Bad News Bears remake which features the same tired plot devices and motley assortment of characters, proving there’s no need for creativity in these kinds of films. Along with the Bears remake, Rebound is one of three underdog kid’s sports movies to come out this summer, and it doesn’t offer much, other than a kid-friendly movie on the marquee to draw attention as a family film. It’s summer time. Skip this one and go play some real sports with your kids in the park. No doubt, your family is just as colorful, and less painfully predictable to be around than this movie.