SCRUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (HUNTER)

So The Wife & I decided for the heck of it to kill a hundred & ten minutes at The Bounty Hunter, the romantic comedy starring Gerard Butler as a gruff, scruffy ex-cop-turned-bounty-hunter and Jennifer Aniston as his ambitious reporter ex, who's ended up with a bench warrant on her & who he takes great pleasure in getting to drag to jail by force.

Those hundred & ten minutes died a slow death.

I like Butler, & I like Aniston--I especially like her commonsensical regular-girl in Office Space--but the absence of buzz between them here is startling, especially when the bustling farce mechanics slow down so that two characters can try to connect. It's like watching a bad date, where the two parties are struggling to stay upbeat for the duration even though they know this isn't going anywhere.

They aren't helped by the colossal inanity & banality of the dialogue. I knew we were in trouble near the beginning of the film, when a cop says to Butler "A bounty hunter, eh? Why don't you get a real job?" & Butler replies--get ready--"Why don't you kiss my ass?" To which I thought--really? That was the zinger they gave him? Whoever wrote that line didn't have pride enough in being a Hollywood screenwriter to spend a few more seconds at the keyboard before settling on "Why don't you kiss my ass?"