Metacritic reviews

By not trying too hard, this remake of a dumb movie has got spring in its step. The bounce is on us.

It's Wilson who's the score here. Quick, scruffy and completely at ease, he takes on Jack's let-it-ride charms and foibles as if he were tossing a Frisbee with friends, and it's impossible to watch him without wanting in on the game.

Like the frosty tropical drinks the people keep sipping here, it's refreshing and icy-cool, a sinful pleasure mixed by experts.

There's some entertainment value, but the production as a whole is unfocused.

When the general pleasantness of the atmosphere and the cleverness of the screenplay don't carry the movie, Wilson does -- at least until a hurried, confounding finale that reveals its casualness as sloppiness.

The low-wattage thrills, lukewarm jokes and unconvincing caricatures we encounter in The Big Bounce simply don't generate that kind of excitement.

A sexy crime story. The double-crossing complications don't make much sense, but it's fun to watch Wilson turn the hard-boiled dialogue into a series of ironic one-liners under the hot Oahu sun.

That The Big Bounce works at all is a testament to Wilson, an Oscar-nominated screenwriter ("The Royal Tenenbaums") who probably could have come up with something better in his sleep.

A film so boring, unsexy, styleless, sluggish and physically ugly that its badness seems almost intentional.

Go in with lowered expectations, and expect to have them dashed.