Watching Bounce, you look at him (Affleck) and believe how much he's got at stake, and you look at Paltrow and know why.

Roos combines a sharp script with excellent performances.

It's a love story, yes, but one whose sweetness is cut by honest performances, a sharply drawn supporting cast and a fairly serious, yet never self-pitying, tone.

In movies with this story structure, all depends on the precise timing of the delay and the revelation, and Bounce misses. Not by a lot, but by enough.

Ben Affleck and Gwyneth Paltrow are so immensely appealing, and their chemistry together is so unforced, that their presence alone makes a movie worth seeing. Thankfully, Bounce has even more going for it.

The movie is well acted, deeply moving, and unlike some love stories, it doesn't feel forced or contrived.

For the first time since "Chasing Amy," I realized why people like Ben Affleck.

Roos introduces the possibility that perhaps two partials add up to the whole truth, and in so doing creates a provocative love story that sticks with you long after the credits roll.

There's nothing in Bounce you haven't seen before, but the movie is surprisingly unsentimental, the Paltrow factor cannot be denied.

Bounce may be far from a great film, but its pleasures are consistent enough to remind you of how few movies nowadays come anywhere close to matching it in intelligence and emotional balance.

Thrillingly unpredictable.

After a few movies in which Paltrow was in danger of becoming a caricature of herself, she's back in rare form.

Something is missing in Bounce, the muted dynamic of which calls forth a perhaps inevitably muted reaction.

Beneath the plot's romantic turns lies a surprisingly complex examination of the personal and professional price of honesty; falsehoods, half-truths, little white lies and self-delusion spur most of the key plot developments, and Roos never resorts to platitudes to account for their effects.