MOVIE REVIEWS: “THE BOUNTY HUNTER”

In recent months some websites have been accusing Roger Ebert of becoming overly generous in his reviews of films that many other critics have given the back of their hands. That criticism could not be applied to his review of The Bounty Hunter, in which Ebert remarks, “I stared with glazed eyes at The Bounty Hunter. Here is a film with no need to exist. Among its sins is the misuse of Jennifer Aniston, who can be and has been very funny, but not in dreck like this.” Likewise Elizabeth Weitzman writes in the New York Daily News, “There are a lot of people who still want to believe that Jennifer Aniston deserves to be a movie star. But frankly, she’s giving us very little to work with.” Her co-star, Gerard Butler, does, it would seem. Amy Biancolli in the San Francisco Chronicle says that Butler “gets his money shot when he emerges wet from the shower. Cue wolf whistle from crowd.” Claudia Puig in USA Today writes that Aniston and Butler “can’t seem to muster any believable chemistry. A lot of mugging happens, but no magic.” As for the movie itself, Peter Howell in the Toronto Star sums up the feelings of the majority of critics when he describes it as “a witless waste of celluloid.”