Electrified_Voltage
It's been a few years since this family sports comedy was unleashed upon the world and turned out to be a commercial flop, but it only came to my attention very recently. I guess that was because I recognized Martin Lawrence, who plays the starring role here. He has appeared in a good number of films in his career, but before seeing this one, the only film I had seen him in was "Big Momma's House" (though I had also seen some of his stand-up comedy). To me, that 2000 comedy turned out to be a mixed blessing, which was better than I thought it would be. I may not have had any good reason to watch "Rebound", but I watched it anyway! It seemed that this unpopular movie was generally considered to be unfunny and clichéd, so I wasn't surprised at how little I found amusing in it.Coach Roy McCormick is an egotistical college basketball coach who has trouble controlling his temper. After a violent outburst on the court causes him to accidentally kill the opposing team's bird mascot, he will be banned for life from college basketball unless he can get through an entire season without any more blowups like this! He doesn't get to coach college basketball this season, and will have to prove himself elsewhere before he can return. Meanwhile, the Mount Vernon Junior High School Smelters are all terrible basketball players, and decide they will need a highly skilled coach if they're going to get any better. They decide that Roy would be a great choice, so he gets an offer to coach this middle school team and takes it, only so he can prove himself to be a competent coach and go back to coaching college basketball as soon as possible. However, this experience doesn't turn out to be quite what he expects, and working with these middle school students might change his attitude! Near the beginning of the film, the humour isn't hilarious, but there were times when I at least smiled. However, that changes VERY soon as we're introduced to the members of the Mount Vernon Junior High School team by Annie and Amy, two student sports reporters who appear frequently in the film and don't help with the laughs. This sequence is especially lame when we are shown the Ralph character about to vomit and the Fuzzy character walking down the hall and stuffing his face before getting hit by a door. From this point on, I don't think anything even put a smile on my face. The members of the team who are supposed to be funny definitely fail at that, and when Roy is warned that Ralph throws up whenever he is nervous, it sounds like this player's vomiting could be much more of a running gag than it turns out to be, but it's still memorably unfunny when it happens. When the Big Mac and Wes characters join the team, they don't contribute any laughs to the film, either. This includes the times when Big Mac beats up any peer who gives her trouble, which COULD be funny, but it's not.I'm sure many hate Martin Lawrence as a comedian, which I certainly don't, and while nobody is very funny at all in this movie, including him, his performance is not exactly what makes "Rebound" so bad. I think the performances of those who play the members of the Mount Vernon team generally contribute a lot more to the lack of laughs here than Lawrence does. I'm sorry, I know Tara Correa-McMullen, who plays Big Mac, was killed in a gang shooting at the age of only sixteen the same year this movie came out, and her role here was the only one she ever got to play on the silver screen (it appears she acted in a couple TV shows, but this was her only movie), but this includes her. So, overall, this 2005 flop is just another lacklustre PG-rated family sports movie, and its clichéd formula may not be as big a problem as its poor humour and uninteresting characters. If you want a sports comedy that's actually funny, one marketed as a family film or not, I suggest you skip this particular movie and look elsewhere.
Rodrigo Amaro
Martin Lawrence plays Roy, an arrogant and famous basketball coach suspended after a rant during a match, and he's forced to coach a high school team of kids whose major kicks on the sport is to be losers. "Rebound" follows the clichéd path of many other films of the subject but fails almost in everything it tries so hard to copy. It tries to be funny but it isn't (I mean, not even a single joke); it tries to create a climatic match during the end but it's almost a boring thing to see and to get there you might fall asleep during the other scenes. Besides all the unfunny aspects there are more serious things to be said of "Rebound". With the notable exception of Steven Christopher Parker (who plays Wes, the intelligent kid but very unexperienced with basketball), all the other kids haven't got sympathetic characters, I couldn't relate with anyone of them (or relate with any character actually, everybody was boring or annoying). This was supposed to be a comedy, with some friendly characters and funny situations, but what I've got here was a distant, shallow and boring kid's movie. This wasn't a good comical vehicle for Lawrence although he has some good moments (the two scenes where he talks to one of the kids about being a good player, motivating the kids to not be "the only guy on the team who plays well and start thinking on the team as a whole). Sadly Breckin Meyer was reduced to two or three scenes, playing Lawrence's agent. This is not a case of a bad film with terrible things to show, but it is a misguided and unfunny little picture. 5/10
