Customer Reviews

The Big Bounce (1969)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

About 35 years ago, I sat alone in a movie theater and watched this movie. That should have been my first clue that this movie was destined for nothing, but I was then, and still am, a devoted Ryan O'Neal fan, perhaps the longest-lasting fan he's ever had! For years I searched for a video of this to complete my collection of all his movies. I guess this movie was so bad it never went to video, but the happy ending just came when a remake of this movie prompted the release of the original on DVD.

Ryan O'Neal is cute as ever in this pre-Love Story tale based on the Elmore Leonard novel. Leigh Taylor-Young is beautiful; I think I had forgotten just how beautiful. Their chemistry is magnetic and, after all, she did become the second Mrs. Ryan O'Neal in real life.

The story centers around an ex-VietNam GI drifter Jack Ryan (O'Neal) who while working as a migratory farm laborer meets and is instantly attracted to the boss' secretary/lover Nancy Barker(Taylor-Young). Their physical attraction is such that Jack is willing to do anything to please Nancy, even go along with her petty theft schemes. When Nancy comes up with the idea to steal $50,000 (yes, when this movie was released that amount could have set the duo up for life) Jack is cautious and becomes aware of a sick streak in his girlfriend.

Lee Grant, Van Heflin, and other actors of note must cringe when they look at their performances is this one today. It's stereotypical, trite, a bit silly, and totally laughable, especially the scene where Taylor-Young, in a fit of rage, destroys her boss' beach house. And it even shows quite a bit of skin by 1969 standards as Leigh Taylor-Young is shown nude in several scenes.

Would I recommend it? Only if you love either of these two stars as much as I do. Did I enjoy it? Oh, totally. For me personally, it was a five-star experience, but to keep my credibility it should only get one star on amazon. Therefore, I have compromised and given it three.

About a decade after its Troy Donahue/Connie Stevens teen hit Parrish, Warner Bros. sought to duplicate that flick's formula with 1969's THE BIG BOUNCE, which offered a new pair of TV stars - "PEYTON PLACE"'s Ryan O'Neal and Leigh Taylor-Young - in another sexy soaper set in a fertile farmland valley. The giggles begin right there: while Parrish's lovers toiled and tore each others' clothes off in tobacco fields, The Big Bounce examines the amorous ways of... cucumber pickers!

Hitchhiking along the road after losing his job, handsome cuke field hand Ryan O'Neal is picked up by his former boss, cuke king James Daly, who's out for a drive with his teenage mistress, Leigh Taylor-Young. "The pickers call you 'El Pepino Grande,'" O'Neal tells Daly, helpfully translating, "The Great Cucumber." This talk about cucumbers instantly arouses the nubile Taylor-Young, and her pepino fixation only increases when she learns that O'Neal is a troublemaker who's spent time in jail. But she's not the only one who appreciates the finer points of O'Neal's character. At a local bar, lonesome judge Van Heflin asks O'Neal to join him for drinks, and, batting his eyes hungrily, hints, "What do I look like--a nice, clean old man?" Ever on the make, O'Neal opts instead for saloon fixture Lee Grant, who lives with her young daughter at the seaside motel Heflin owns. Soon O'Neal is gainfully employed as the motel "handyman." Just how handy? Well, Heflin nicknames him "Stud" as he cooks breakfast for the two of them in his tres gay motel unit, replete with lavender wallpaper and puce curtains.

Left alone in Daly's beach house, Taylor-Young promptly invites O'Neal over, and before long confides that she was "Miss Perky Pickle" for Daly's cucumber empire. That difficult confession taken care of, she next reveals, "When I was 14, I was selling it to all the boys on the block." O'Neal wonders, "How old are you?" To which Taylor-Young replies, "How old do I have to be?" O'Neal is unfazed that this promising tart is underage, nor does he see anything seriously amiss about her asking, "Did you ever kill anybody? Was it fun?" No surprise, then, that he's all for it when she proposes they go on a neighborhood rampage together, during which they throw rocks through windows, break into a stranger's bedroom and make off with a bottle of booze. The evening culminates, as you'd hoped, in a deserted cemetery where they make love on a gravestone. And this, mind you, all happens on the first date.

Things are less pleasant when Taylor-Young's married sugar daddy, Daly, is in residence. Hoping to gain political favor with a visiting senator, Daly insists that his jailbait sweetie bed the horny politico. "What if I don't play?" Taylor-Young asks. "If I had to replace you," sneers Daly, "it might almost take a week." Having done the deed, Taylor-Young searches down O'Neal to join her in revenge. But first things first: before getting bogged down in detailed planning, they strip, run bare-naked into the surf, swim out to Daly's yacht and have sex onboard. Then Taylor-Young suggests they steal 50 grand of Daly's payroll money. Not yet fully comprehending that Taylor-Young is nuts, O'Neal agrees. They celebrate their resolve by going for a spin in her car on the highway, during which two teenagers in a dune buggy get in her way, and she, laughing maniacally, runs the buggy off a cliff.

Come morning, O'Neal is finally having second thoughts about Taylor-Young's sanity. He broaches the subject of the previous night's crash victims by asking, "What if I told you they're dead?" Nothing if not consistent, she replies, "They had it coming to them. Want a drink?" To which O'Neal, suddenly in a mood for nit-picking, exclaims, "It's 8:30 in the morning!" Now on the moral high ground, Taylor-Young lets him have it: "So--the big rooster turns out to be a little chicken. Is that it, chickie? Don't go square on me! Next thing you'll want to get married and make an honest woman out of me." O'Neal replies, "The thought strikes terror." (This dialogue is all the richer when you consider that, in real life, O'Neal and Taylor-Young were married when they made this movie together.)

Back at the motel, O'Neal discovers that Lee Grant has committed suicide. He comforts her grieving daughter by explaining, "Sometimes grown-ups get tired. They don't know what else to do anymore, they just want to go to sleep." (This is especially true of grown-ups who are watching HE BIG BOUNCE.) The movie reaches its apex as Taylor-Young, now going officially psychotic, tears up the beach house and puts a fatal bullet in what she claims she thought was a prowler. O'Neal observes, accurately, that it was he who was obviously the intended target. "Why would I want to shoot you?" Taylor-Young bleats. "Maybe because you thought it might be fun," hisses O'Neal, adding, "Was it fun?" In this cheeseball classic's unusual idea of a resolution, Taylor-Young shrugs her shoulders and replies, "It was... all right."

For unintended hilarity, THE BIG BOUNCE is much more than just "all right."

For one thing the score by Mike Curb I felt horribly out of place in the film UNTIL the last shot (I won't mention it not to spoil the film) then I "got it". The music is the antithisis of what is happening on screen, and it's meant to be! It's a well made film and there is a hell of a lot more Leonard in this script uncensored than there was in recent Hollywood versions of his novels, Get Shorty for example.

PS The scene with Leigh Taylor Young standing nude in the graveyard is one of the most brilliant images I've ever seen in films.

This film was a made years ago which has a realy good story line But has a great sound track. I would recomend it to anyone who likes a good story in California life style with mystery an outstanding cast with suspense,and music

The original The Big Bounce is superior to the remake.
It is more believable, even though both movies are based on the same novel.
And the acting is better.

I saw this film in the 70's.........its dated now but so enjoyable as a cameo from that era. I found that I remembered the music! It made a big impact on me when I saw it the first time and I am glad I had the chance to see it again. A must for any Ryan o'Niel or Leigh Taylor Young fan.

and looks like the technicolor print I saw in the army which stands up beautifully. Ryan O'Neil can not deliver a line, but Leigh Taylor Young can and in spades. She is a knock out and for me the fun of the film. The supporting cast is also a good one. It is a shame who ever decided to cut up Elmore Leonard's book wasn't fired before the film was made. They left out a main character which created lot of the tension and blackmail. Elmore Leonard's Kill Shot was short changed the same way; too bad! The books are good. I give this 3 stars for Leigh Taylor Young;and it is far from the worst film you will see.

When it was first released, The Big Bounce was crucified by the critics and its reputation has never recovered. It's not a great movie by any means but it is interesting and entertaining. The central characters are not particularly likable and the general attitude of the movie is pretty cynical.

The DVD has quite good picture quality and the images are firm and stable. This DVD looks good even when watched via a projector on a large screen.

Guven the cast of Ryan ONeal and Leigh Taylor Young, you buy this disk knowing that you will not be seeing Shakespearean level acting. More like "method acting", and not on the scale of Brando or even Jackie Gleason.
LT Young was one of the most beautiful actresses of all time, so I figured I couldn't lose on this; if the plot was thin(it was), at least she could make up for it. Well, that doesn't work out.

Out of curiosity, I rented the 1969 film version of THE BIG BOUNCE (TBB) from Netflix, and it proved the underrated 2004 edition to be another example of a remake that's way better than the original! The two versions of TBB are fairly close in plotting, but the 2004 model captures source author Elmore Leonard's loopy, cynical sense of humor much better, skipping the original film's mawkish asides and heavy-handed attempts at poignancy and psychodrama. For instance, the self-pitying, self-destructive, male-afflicted single mom played by Lee Grant in 1969 is rebooted in the latest edition as a cheerfully coquettish tourist played by Anahit Minasyan, whose fate is much more upbeat than poor Grant's. Also, TBB Mark 2's Hawaiian setting and George S. Clinton's playful score combining rock and Hawaiian-style music appealed to me more than TBB Mark 1's been there-done-that Los Angeles locales (by the way, I seem to recall that Leonard's book is set in Detroit) and syrupy soft rock by Mike Curb, of all people. Next to The Mike Curb Congregation, The Brady Bunch's albums sound like the Rolling Stones' greatest hits! Even if it didn't sound hilariously dated to early 21st-century ears, Curb's score is still all wrong for a downbeat crime drama like the '69 model (not that the first film is completely humor-free; Van Heflin's eccentrically decorated home was one of the film's few bright spots). I almost got the feeling Curb originally composed the music for an entirely different kind of film, perhaps some perky, inspirational heart-warmer starring the folks from Up With People which never got off the ground, so someone decided to graft Curb's score onto TBB v. 1 instead of letting it go to waste. While both films have great casts overall (the original includes Heflin, James Daly, and Robert Webber in the roles played in 2004 by Morgan Freeman, Gary Sinise, and Charlie Sheen), in the starring role of ex-con Jack Ryan, Owen Wilson's wisecracking slackertude in TBB Mark 2 is much more engaging than Ryan O'Neal's personality in TBB Mark 1. While I've enjoyed O'Neal in comedies, particularly 1972's WHAT'S UP, DOC?, I've never liked him in dramas. To me, O'Neal has always come across as moist and mewling when he's supposed to be tender and sensitive, and surly and petulant when he's supposed to be tough and hard nosed, and his performance in TBB #1 is no exception. However, both films have terrific leading ladies playing thrill-seeking kept woman Nancy: the 2004 version marked Sara Foster's screen debut, while the original starred the lovely and beguiling Leigh Taylor-Young, then O'Neal's real-life wife and former co-star on TV's PEYTON PLACE. (Fun Fact: Leigh Taylor-Young was nominated for a Laurel Award for Best Female New Face for her performance in TBB.) The chemistry between O'Neal and LT-Y is one of the film's few saving graces; they sure seem to enjoy tearing their clothes off, and they look good doing it, too! :-) Alas, except for the occasional memorable line (for example, here's Heflin slyly commenting on O'Neal's phone chat with LT-Y: "You look like the mouse that got swallowed by the pussy."), Robert Dozier's screenplay can't seem to decide whether Nancy is a victim of callous men, a calculating femme fatale, or a plain old homicidal psycho. The critics who panned TBB Mark 2 obviously never had to suffer through Mark 1! If you've got your heart set on an at-home Elmore Leonard film festival, rent GET SHORTY, OUT OF SIGHT, even the overlong but still exceptional JACKIE BROWN, and include THE BIG BOUNCE -- but unless you lust after Ryan O'Neal and Leigh Taylor-Young in their prime, make sure you get your mitts on the superior 2004 version!