Laughs don’t quite bridge the age gap

The Rebound has been sitting on a shelf for more than a year and, in truth, that’s where it should have stayed.

Bearing striking similarities to the Uma Thurman film Prime, Bart Freundlich’s predictable romantic comedy asks whether love can truly bridge the age divide or if the prejudices of friends and family will ultimately undermine the foundations of a relationship between a woman and a younger man.

If Freundlich has any interesting observations about modern day romance, he fails to weave them into a pedestrian script that gives all of the half-decent lines to the supporting characters.

These include two cherubic offspring, who are wise beyond their years and seem far more balanced than their mother.

“We thought that you were dead,” says the boy, startled when his mum wakes from her alcohol-induced stupor.

“We thought you had asphyxiated on your vomit,” adds the girl, sassily.

The perfectly-pickled parent is Sandy (Zeta-Jones), a 40-year-old yummy mummy whose world implodes when she discovers footage of her husband Frank (Robards) having an affair with a neighbour.

Sandy flings down her apron and muffin tins, abandons the suburbs and heads back to the hustle and bustle of New York City with her daughter Sadie (Gould) and son Frank Jr (Cherry) in tow.

The mother lands a job at a TV sports network and needs to hurriedly arrange childcare.

So she approaches 25-year-old college graduate Aram Finkelstein (Bartha), who works in the coffee shop below her apartment.

Aram jumps at the opportunity to earn more money and gain more independence from his controlling Jewish mother, Roberta (Gleason), and long-suffering father, Harry (Garfunkel).

Friendship turns to attraction and eventually Sandy and Aram acknowledge their feelings and strike up a romance that raises eyebrows among her circle of friends, especially acid-tongued Daphne (Grant).

Aram successfully allays fears by poking fun at the age difference, but Sandy continues to fixate on those 15 years.

The Rebound has some amusing exchanges and Zeta-Jones and Bartha are an attractive central pairing, but there’s simply no screen chemistry between the pair.

It’s little wonder everyone counsels Sandy against the affair.

Convention blights every twist in the narrative and the set pieces feel hopelessly contrived, like when Sandy attends self-defence classes and lets out her pent-up rage at her husband in one foul-mouthed primal scream.

Or a blind date that culminates in the would-be suitor relieving himself in a portable loo in the middle of the street then wrapping his unwashed hands around Sandy’s stunned face. Thankfully, reality bites for a downbeat ending, but Freundlich simply can’t resist a saccharine conclusion, because a woman like Sandy apparently needs a man at her side.