Starring Owen Wilson, Morgan Freeman, and Sara Foster. Rated PG.

The Big Bounce is one big, fat slacker of a remake. Set in Hawaii--and based on an early Elmore Leonard novel that features his familiar blend of dopey lowlifes chasing dirty money--it has the feel of a blissed-out tourist who's gotten a little too much sun. Director George Armitage (Miami Blues, Grosse Pointe Blank) serves up plenty of eye candy in the form of sandy beaches, crashing waves, and slow-roasted surfers, but his normally reliable talent for sustaining a sense of quirky tension fails him miserably here. How lazy does a movie have to be not to bounce significantly higher than the 1969 original, which starred a wooden Ryan O'Neal? Let's just say that it's not the most auspicious transition of Leonard from page to screen, falling somewhere between Burt Reynolds's catatonic mutilation of Stick and Steven Soderbergh's tart take on Out of Sight.

For screenwriter Sebastian Gutierrez, it should have been a no-brainer. Consider that Leonard's lean novels already read like scripts, complete with the kind of sparkling dialogue for which most Hollywood hacks would trade their hair plugs. As always, the plot is ready-made. A low-level burglar named Jack Ryan (Owen Wilson) is sucked into stealing $200,000 in cash by a gorgeous beach bunny named Nancy (Sara Foster). Nancy is the disenchanted mistress of a shady developer (Gary Sinise). The developer, who likes to keep large sums of money in his safe, plans to use the funds to hire a bunch of goons. Their job? Run off the pesky environmentalists who are delaying an important project.

Alas, nobody here seems to give a half-finished umbrella drink for letting the caper unfold with the slightest menace. George Clinton's intrusive score appears determined to convince us that we've bought tickets to a 90-minute luau. But even in those rare moments when the steel guitar stops ringing in our ears, we quickly realize that The Big Bounce is getting a little too smart-assed for its own good.

The movie's best asset is Wilson, who uses his considerable charm to make the first hour or so bearable. The rest of the cast coasts along with mixed results. Morgan Freeman sleepwalks through his role as a sly judge while newcomer Sara Foster is asked to do little more than look good in various stages of undress. She succeeds. But by the last half-hour, you just want to throw a beach towel over the screen and head for home under an honest rain.