For God knows whatever reason, my parents love Martin Lawrence. But, I can do without Martin Lawrence in my movie-watching. So, when they decided to go see "Rebound", I almost backed out. But, seeing as how I knew it wouldn't be a packed theatre, I went with them. I said to myself "I got nothing to lose, so what's the worst that could happen?" I should have known then and there that when I worked two Martin Lawrence movie titles into one sentence unintentionally, that I was in for a big let down.

"Rebound" is like discovering a train wreck, entering one of the trains, and when you go inside, it's actually the inside of your boring house. Nothing about it makes sense, and you wonder how you got there.

This has all of the bad kids sports movie clichés rolled into one horrible disaster. Eddie Murphy doesn't even need to worry about being the king of being the black comedian in bad kids movies, because Lawrence takes the cake and the crown from Eddie Murphy.

Instead of throwing random sentences and paragraphs into this, I'll just attempt to summarize the movie in simple terms: Martin Lawrence is rich and famous. He's a rough coach who wants nothing but wins. He gets fired from coaching in the big leagues and is forced into coaching middle schoolers. He learns a bit about himself, changes his egotisical ways, coaches the kids full time instead of bringing in the big money, gets the woman with a child (the kid just happens to be on the team he coaches) from an ended marriage, and still manages to get his team of middle schoolers to win "The Big Game". Not even a crummy lesson of "Hey guys, it doesn't matter if we win or lose." I would have awarded extra points for being so goddamn corny, but they couldn't even go that far on the corny-o-meter.

While my parents laughed it up whenever Lawrence made a funny face, I sat there wondering how a movie could be so damn obvious and predictable, without throwing a single curveball at us. There's not even anyone who gets injured and can't play the big game! It all works out so smoothly, that when the team pours Gatorade over Lawrence's head after the final game, I half-expected him to have a heart attack and die. Then the team could have mourned his loss, and went on to win again next year with the Coach there in spirit. Well, that movie still would have sucked, but at least some sort of obstacle would have presented itself.

Side Note: A kid named Ralph in the movie (who throws up all the time. Get it? Ralph! He throws up! HAHAHA!) has to be the weirdest looking kid since Miko Hughes, that small bastard of a kid who played the autistic child in one of Bruce Willis's movies. I can only imagine the character of Ralph must look in the mirror a lot, which would really explain why he constantly vomits.

Side Note 2: Horatio Sanz has a death grip on the "Unfunniest Man Alive" award.

Side Note 3: I don't understand why two middle-school girls constantly travel around with the basketball team, and comment on all of the games as if they were sports announcers, complete with hand-held tape recorder. It would have made even more sense to have Ebert and Roeper sitting on the sidelines during the games, and commenting on how bad the movie is.

What's good about the movie? Very, very little. Megan Mullally is the hottest school principal ever, but when I think of her, I think of Debra Messing and two overly gay guys on some shitty NBC sitcom, so it's not too difficult to think highly of Mullally when compared to that. The referee of the games has the same hair, the same height, the same weight, and the same annoying voice as Ray Romano. The only difference is this guy is funnier in his mere 40 seconds of dialogue than 200+ episodes of Ray Romano on his own sitcom. Ouch.

Oh, and Patrick Warburton makes the best of a horrible movie. Why must I watch THE David Puddy playing supporting roles in HORRIBLE movies instead of seeing him in his own movie. Given the choice between Rebound and watching Patrick Warburton just shout in a comical fashion for 2 hours straight, I would choose Patrick any day of the week. Then again, I would choose him over a lot more than this shitfest, but that's not relevant to my initial point. Here's a better one: given the choice between watching this again, and biting off my own arm... well, let's just say the pain of losing my own arm would eventually go away. The pain of "Rebound" will never die. Don't make the same mistake I made.

Grade: D-

What a terrible movie. That is simply the only way to put it. Cliched, unfunny, dreadful pacing and subpar performances. Overall, a disaster of a film, that had no potential to begin with. Better left in the discount bin, as it will get there soon enough.

D+

Pretty damn bad... No redeeming factor about this film whatsoever.

- D

Hmmm, I feel so much love for the flick.

I think we have a lock for Best Picture nominee at WOKJ's Movie Awards next year.

D+

I'm surprised this movie didn't get a G rating. It was so tame, so safe. Seriously, Martin Lawrence delivered the most unblack performance that has ever been seen.

What a waste of time. D

I wanna see it now, heh.

I'm not gonna pick on the fact that for a basketball movie, it doesn't understand anything about it, let alone the rules of the game, or the fact that the referee shouldn't even be working in a middle school league, or the fact that Martin Lawrence's character shouldn't have been a coach in any league whatsoever, or the fact that the team wins only five games and yet ends up being the state champion. No, I'm not going to mention those. The movie just isn't very funny. There are a couple of chuckles here and there, but for the most part, it's just like any other kid sports movie ever made.

C-

C-


It was bad, but not that bad. I wasn't too bored, at least it went by quickly and, yeah, I chuckled a couple of times. It must be the most clichéd movie I have seen in several years, though. But I've seen worse (*cough* Are we there yet? *cough*)

Average family flick.

C