The Big Bounce, starring Owen Wilson, Sara Foster, and others.

Nobody wants to be Brad Whitford. Who’s Brad Whitford, you ask? He’s the guitar player in Aerosmith not named Joe Perry. Brad hangs out in the back line, chugs away the rhythm guitar parts, takes the occasional solo, and picks up a fat paycheck. But no young rocker ever says to himself, “Boy, I hope I wind up just like Brad Whitford.” Just doesn’t happen. Actors have a similar problem, which in their case might be called the Nobody Wants to be George Kennedy syndrome. Good comedy role players want to be leading men, while leading men want to be rock stars. Remember Bill Murray in The Razor’s Edge? One thing to admire about Ashton Kutcher is that after becoming famous as daffy Kelso, he made his first movie playing, well, pretty much Kelso.

This leads us to the problem of Owen Wilson. He’s a funny guy, no doubt. He also has superstar good looks. These two traits allowed him to work as Jackie Chan’s cracker humor foil in things like Shanghai Noon. That’s certainly a noble and honorable profession--the kind of thing that, with a good accountant, will get an apartment in NYC, a nice house in California, and a few kids through college. Apparently Owen (or his agent) has higher ambitions. Nothing wrong that, Bill Murray has actually become a decent dramatic actor. In this movie Wilson sheds the Brad Whitford role and gets to work with an Elmore Leonard story (great start), in a cast that includes Morgan Freeman (ditto), and opposite a really hot blond.

The result is a trainwreck. Actually, that’s not fair, some trainwrecks make sense. From the first moment of the film, with Wilson doing a voice over about how bad luck and bad times led him to Hawaii, it’s clear that we have some serious problems. The high pitched, sardonic quip of a voice that made him funny with Eddie Murphy in I Spy just sounds screwed up reading anything by Leonard. It’s not “that makes me cringe” bad but its close. The “plot” of the movie is about Jack (Wilson) who falls into a conspiracy with Nancy (Sara Foster, looks great in a sarong) to rob the married guy she’s banging. Along the way he gets some help from Walter (Freeman) and has to avoid various more or less bad guys. I think the movie is supposed to be one of those snappy, multi-character Tarantino or Guy Ritchie movies, where a sympathetic small timer has to stay alive while trying to get the money and/or the girl. The problem is neither Jack nor Nancy seem nearly smart enough or nefarious enough to concoct a crime more complex than holding up a gas station. There’s supposed to be a budding connection created between risk takers Nancy and Jack as they break into various houses. Instead they look incomparably incompetent.

I won’t bother you with the details of the scam Jack and Nancy are trying to pull off. It only sort of holds together anyway. Here’s how disinterested I was in the movie. As it moved along, I noticed Willie Nelson playing a local cop. That was strange enough, but really cool, so I started humming “Always On My Mind” in my head. I love Willie. Then there is a scene where Freeman and Wilson are playing dominoes with Nelson. It matters (just a teensy little bit) in the “plot” about Nancy and Jack’s scam. Then I noticed Harry Dean Stanton was the fourth domino player. He gets maybe 20 seconds of screen time. Freaking Harry Dean Stanton, who can act circles around most anyone in film, gets to be the fourth domino player. Was this all the film that was shot of him? Where’s the rest of it? Only 20 seconds of Harry Dean could possibly be fit into this awful movie? Did someone in wardrobe have a fit because in the final cut Foster was never in anything green? While Harry Dean gets to be the fourth domino player (and does a pretty good job), Charlie Sheen stumbles around miserably as the henchman of the guy Jack and Nancy are trying to set up. His character isn’t even supposed to be good looking, so why not put Harry Dean in that role?

No sensible person should ever see this film, it’s that bad, and I can only think of two possible reasons for not changing the channel if it’s on HBO. First, you might just like Morgan Freeman, and even in this toad he’s fun to watch on screen. Second, if you are a guy or a non-traditional girl you might really like watching Foster, while if you’re a girl or a non-traditional guy you might swoon at the sight of Wilson. Apparently Foster has big time family ties in the entertainment biz, and she has supernova eyes. Then again, her bio says she’s hosting “ET on MTV.” Not exactly signaling thespian depth. Wilson is a commodity so you’ll see him in other movies; perhaps back in his bankable Brad Whitford roll as comic foil. Let’s hope whoever is responsible for this disemboweling of a Leonard novel doesn’t read Tolstoy. I shudder in horror at the thought of Bruce Willis and Jessica Simpson doing “The Kreutzer Sonata” or Jim Carey and Leo Dicaprio in “Master and Man.”