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Movies & TV Movies & TV Reviews

The Bounty Hunter

THE BOUNTY HUNTER (Andy Tennant). 110 minutes. Opens Friday (March 19). For venues, trailers and times, see Movies. Rating: NN


Its faults may be legion, but at least The Bounty Hunter finally led me to understand what’s wrong with Gerard Butler’s American accent: it makes him sound like a cartoon duck.

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You’d think this might be an asset in a comedy, particularly one like The Bounty Hunter that’s halfway to being a cartoon anyway… but no dice. It just makes him sound squawky and pissed off, even when all he’s trying to do is order a drink.

Maybe he’s just not very good at comedy. The Ugly Truth, last year’s attempt to break him out as a rom-com star, was wretched from beginning to end, so I was willing to consider his flailing performance collateral damage, but after The Bounty Hunter I’m thinking someone needs to take a little responsibility here.

Not total responsibility, though. The film is the latest slapdash, who-cares affair from Andy Tennant, who made the risible Fool’s Gold a couple of years back and the half-assed Hitch a few years before that.

Tennant fancies himself a maker of modern screwball comedies, but he doesn’t understand the mechanics, or the magic, of the genre, which builds comic momentum from the collision of complicated, clearly defined personalities. Tennant just throws two people on the screen, tells us they hate each other and pushes them through one pointless chase sequence after another until the inevitable rekindling of passion. And then, more chasing.

The creaky premise casts Butler as a world-weary New York bounty hunter whose latest assignment is his cranky reporter ex-wife (a flinty Jennifer Aniston), who’s skipped out on a traffic hearing to pursue a story about a suspicious suicide. Butler nabs her Aniston escapes. He nabs her again. She tasers him. He nabs her again. And so forth. They drive from Atlantic City to New York, arguing and sulking and stopping as the contrivances of the plot require.

And there are many contrivances, like the mutual friend who’s also the target of Aniston’s investigation, who tells them to lie low, so they check into the bed-and-breakfast where they once honeymooned – and it’s their anni versary weekend! Awwwww! No, seriously, someone at the preview screening went “Awwwww!” at that point.

So if you’re the kind of person who goes “Awwwww!” at movies, you may well enjoy The Bounty Hunter.

Otherwise you’ll resent spending 12 or 13 bucks to see a pitiful remake of Bird On A Wire that thinks it’s this generation’s His Girl Friday.

normw@nowtoronto.com

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