It’s that odd missing link between today’s flashy blockbusters and the black-and-white studio system films of a generation ago.“The Bounty Hunter” is a studio comedy, neither boring nor spectacular and worth a watch on date night, just not at full ticket price.

The plot of “The Bounty Hunter” is guaranteed to draw an audience. Milo (Gerard Butler) is a slovenly ex-cop, now making his living bringing in bounties for a friend who sells bail bonds. Nicole (Jennifer Aniston) is his ex-wife and a news reporter who jumps bail on a court appearance to chase a lead on a police corruption story. Milo accepts the chance to hunt down his ex and bring her in with all the glee that any frustrated former partner would, and the story is set. I should note that of all the previews I’ve seen in the last three months, the one for this film always got the greatest crowd reaction.

And oh, the whacky hijinks! Those old misunderstandings and convenient wrong-place-right-time happenstances crop up with improbable frequency and are intermittently truly humorous and overly predictable.

The movie’s best scene involves Milo trashing Nicole’s apartment after breaking in, eating Doritos on her bed and then wiping his mouth on a lacy pillow. For every genuine laugh there are numerous near-misses, but none of the scenes were bad enough to make me regret my ticket purchase.

The acting is generally sub-par. Butler’s usual likability is there, dialed up to 11 to try and woo the audience, but his haggard everyman character is still a little too vague for us to deeply connect with. Jason Sudeikis of “Saturday Night Live,” playing Nicole’s incredibly creepy office stalker, has so little energy behind him that he fails to coax laughs out of all but the most over-the-top gags.

The movie’s sins aren’t in what it does but in what it fails to do. The mystery of what exactly Nicole has uncovered isn’t gripping enough to really draw the viewer in and sustain tension for the entire film.

The narrative floats along like fish belly-up on the Jersey turnpike, another casualty of an environment polluted by too much mediocrity for the act to be noticed.

“The Bounty Hunter” is far from bad. It’s light and energetic enough to make a decent date movie.  Anyone buying a ticket expecting an adventure film will be sorely disappointed, however. The few action scenes have been spoiled by the trailer.

The elements of “The Bounty Hunter” are stock romantic comedy parts welded together with the kind of product-creation that often saps a film’s energy.

No great offense is committed by the film, but it meanders and coaxes its laughs. The only crime here is being generic, but that’s hardly a capital offense.

Alexander Hutchins is the editor for the Daily’s politics, police, the College of Engineering and LAS’s science departments, and campus housing reporters and a junior in journalism and mass communication.