The Bounty Hunter earned $21 million at the box office last
weekend. A respectable take, though only enough to place third — behind
Alice in Wonderland and fellow opener Diary of a Wimpy
Kid. The movie still looks like it’ll earn a decent haul, then again, I
don’t remember seeing any of the Wimpy Kid stars frantically making
the publicity rounds on Today or Leno last week.
Critically, the flick garnered almost universal ridicule. It currently sits
at 9 percent “Fresh” on Rotten
Tomatoes, putting it in the same rarefied company as Basic Instinct
2 and Gigli.
Many of the reviews highlight the utter lack of
chemistry between stars and Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston, which may
just hammer the final nail in the latter’s career as a romantic lead. At the
very least, they’re only the latest in a long series of horribly mismatched
onscreen couples, of which the following represents the merest scratching of
the surface.
Charles (Hugh Grant) and Carrie (Andie MacDowell) — Four Weddings
and a Funeral (1994)
Grant almost always plays the same stammering dipshit in his movies, but the
act was still new in ’94, so we fell for it. What I never bought was the
idea that there was anything but indifferent sex between the two. Hell,
they’re both so perfect for one another they marry/almost marry
(respectively) other people before the TOTALLY UNEXPECTED ending where
they finally figure out they’re meant for each other.
Old Guys, Young Girls– Entrapment/Six Days, Seven Nights/Rumor
Has
It
It really isn’t possible to have chemistry with someone 30 years younger
than you, is it? Would anybody besides old dudes on their third marriage
try
to convince us otherwise? I don’t know about you, but now that health
care
reform has been passed, I think Obama’s next course of action should be
to
outlaw movies in which the male romantic lead was getting regular
prostate
exams before his female counterpart was born.
Julia Roberts and Anyone
Dying Young, I Love Trouble, Notting Hill, America’s
Sweethearts…all romantic plotlines take an inevitable back seat
to
Roberts’ naked careerism. Don’t get me wrong, a desire for success is
fine,
but at least fake that you have the slightest attraction to
your
co-star before moving on to your next $10 million paycheck.
Laurel (Jodie Foster) and Jack (Richard Gere) — Sommersby (1993)
Obvious jokes aside, the painful lack of mutual attraction between
Foster
and Gere made all (seven) of us who saw it wonder why (SPOILER) the fact
that Jack wasn’t really Jack was supposed to be that big a
deal. If
this is the most emotion Laurel could muster up for a handsome stranger
who
didn’t beat her up (unlike her actual husband), maybe nobody could make
her
happy.
Nikki (Madonna) and Louden (Griffin Dunne) — Who’s That Girl? (1987)
The Material Girl was at the height of her fame in ’87, and still
laboring
under the delusion she could act. Dunne had merely been laboring — in
largely unseen movies — before unwisely hitching his “lucky star” to
her’s.
I have a hard time remembering a more annoying `80s movie character than
“Nikki Finn,” or a more horrible movie than Who’s That Girl.
Oh yeah…The Bounty Hunter.
This article appears in Mar 18-24, 2010.
