‘Scuse my French, but quite frankly The Bounty Hunter is a polished turd. This is the kind of movie you’d expect Mel Gibson to star in about 20 years ago… oh wait it was, and he did in Bird on a Wire co-starring alongside his butt and Kate Hudson’s mom, Goldie Hawn. Now before you start reminiscing the good ole days of Lethal Weapon and Braveheart you should know that Jennifer Ansiton is still trying to make Brad jealous… this time with Gerry “Six-Minute Abs” Butler.

This time, we’re forced to watch Milo (Butler) an ex-cop-turn-bounty hunter rope in his ex-wife Nicole (Aniston) after she fails to make a court appearance, for a $5,000 reward. Yip… you guessed it, they start to rekindle whatever it was that got them into trouble in the first place and before you know it our crime thriller has turned into a half-assed “romcom” box office flop (sick bag not included)!

Catch the rest of the review and the trailer after the jump…

Jennifer Aniston looks like she got dragged through a bush (and rehab) backwards. She’s recognisable, but Hitch and Fool’s Gold director, Andy Tennant, chooses to zoom in up tight to get every little imperfection without the trademark Friends nipple stand to negotiate a better deal. It’s almost like he’s doing it as revenge for her getting the part on acting talent alone. Her co-lead, Gerard Butler, has been insinuating that the two (he and Aniston) have had an off-screen “thing” for good press… but given the lack of on-screen chemistry, he’d be lucky if he got an ass-grab in without getting punched square in the face.

Butler made it work opposite Katherine Heigl (Knocked Up) in The Ugly Truth, but Rachel still appears to be fixated on Ross Brad in The Bounty Hunter. Apart from making an easy porn rip-off title, The Booty Hunter… I mean Bounty Hunter lacks coherence. It’s like the film started without a script, writing a page and filming the next day until they’d got enough footage. There’s a flow as each scene crashes into the next in slow-motion, but the venues are so weather-beaten when it comes to comedy scenarios that going big in a casino (What Happens in Vegas…), doing a chase scene on a golf course (Caddyshack) and checking into a lame B ‘n B (Management) feel like it’s borrowing from better films, rather than weaving its own original path.

The Bounty Hunter had loads of promise with two likable Hollywood stars getting a little action in what has been primed as a sexy hot pursuit comedy. Unfortunately, it fails to live up to the hype, drawing to a natural conclusion in Vegas… only to fire up the engines again to freewheel into the second half. The handcuffs… great, the Tom & Jerry games… fun, the script as a comedy… diabolical, the performances… routine and ordinary at best. This is not a good hair day at the office for Jen & Gerry. You can sympathise with them for making the best out of the situation, even Jim Carey would struggle to charm the pants off the audience in this one.

“Sorry son, conjugals require mutual consent nowadays.”

The Bounty Hunter is all over the place and generally fails to meet expectations when it comes to thrills, comedy and sassy sex appeal. Apart from Aniston’s sweaty outfit and distant echoes of “This Is SPAR-TA”, there’s rarely a laugh and the so-called thrills are about as taut as any scene from Kindergarten Cop. This is a unadulterated stinker and you can see the cast know it… it’s all in the eyes, you know, the glazed expressions as they force the chemistry and dry run with the half-baked script! What promised to be a fun, sexy thrill ride for guys and girls turns into a damp, sluggish, laugh-an-hour misadventure of cheap tricks and low-key comedy.

Let’s be realistic… what can you expect from a scriptwriter who hasn’t written a comedy in 9 years, a director whose last “blockbuster” was an adaptation of Bananarama’s Cruel Summer known as Fool’s Gold with a co-lead romantic crime comedy tag team to rival Dennis Rodman and Jean-Claude Van Damme in Double Team? Some movies stay on the shelves destined for straight-to-video release… this is one of those films that managed to slip past the goalie and get into the mainstream… sorta like contracting an STD.

Fortunately, you can do something about it by not going to see it. By abstaining from seeing bad movies like The Bounty Hunter we can beat this scourge of duds, turkeys bombs – you name it. If they don’t make money from your ticket, you minimise the risk of contracting them the next time you decide to sleep next to a stranger at the movies. It’s all about prevention, being aware of what’s out there and protecting yourself. If however, you do wish to live life dangerously like Austin Powers and expose yourself to this brain-drain, I’d implore you to at least wear protection… sunglasses, ear plugs and a pillow should do the trick.

The bottom line: Yawn-fest.

Release Date: 2 April, 2010

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