My Rebound Girl is about Rocky (Alex Gonzaga), who kicks off the movie by being dumped by her boyfriend, who is getting back with his ex. She becomes determined to no longer be heartbroken, so she writes down a list of rules designed to keep her away from trouble. But her resolve weakens when the coffee shop she's trying to open gets a new business partner. Coffee farmer Rich (Joseph Marco) is coming out of a six-year relationship, and is exactly the kind of guy she doesn't want to be with.
An early scene in the film establishes that Rocky isn't very nice. Her best friend and business partner is trying to get her to agree to using a particular coffee blend for the cafe. Rocky does not like it, and refuses to open the cafe until she finds what she believes is the perfect blend. One could spin this as the character just being a perfectionist, but the way she lashes out at the people around her, and doesn't seem to consider other people's needs, just makes her out to be a pretty selfish, unpleasant person.
And then there's Rich, who for the sake of saving his family's coffee farming business, apparently makes some deals in bad faith, peddling his coffee to competing shops without telling them. And there's the way that he deals with Rocky and his ex-girlfriend Sofia. It is understandable that this young man may be a little confused about his feelings, but the movie makes him out to be a real cad. He might show qualms about doing some of the things he does, but he still does them anyway. And he doesn't seem to realize how he's hurting the people around him.
This is all to say that the movie is trying to tell a story about two very unlikable people. It wants the audience to care about their eventual bliss as a romantic couple. But it's a real challenge to invest in the happiness of these two. They are written to be really terrible people. And this would be fine if the romance were actually interesting, if these two in spite of their many flaws exhibited a spark that might transcend their own base natures. But there is nothing to this relationship. The film doesn't do a great job of making a case for these two ending up together. They don't even feel like a couple for much of the film. They don't feel like people who are even really attracted to one another.
This all comes in the typical, heavily artificial packaging of the mainstream romcom. There are side characters who don't seem to have lives of their own. They exist to tell the main characters what they ought to be doing and feeling. The characters seem to speak exclusively in metaphors, every line of dialogue, regardless of subject, eventually leading back to the romantic situation of the main characters. The acting doesn't help, either. Alex Gonzaga is only ever really loud. She amplifies the writing in a way that makes the character tough to watch. Joseph Marco doesn't seem to have much chemistry with his co-star, and doesn't really exhibit much personality.
My Rebound Girl is draining. These people are just so awful, and it is so hard to care about their pointless little dramas. Movies don't always have to be nice, likable people, but there is a proper context where this kind of thing can be enjoyed. The thing is, the film doesn't even seem to realize that these characters are awful. It plays their bad behavior as cute or quirky or even strangely noble. If you ran into these people in real life, you wouldn't want them to be your friends. You wouldn't root for them to succeed. It doesn't matter how many coffee metaphors about romance the film throws into its dialogue. None of this is ever going to be cute.
My Rating:
