Catch and Release (2007)
Directed by Susannah Grant
Written by Susannah Grant
Starring Jennifer Garner, Kevin Smith, Timothy Olyphant, Sam Jaeger, Fiona Shaw, Juliette Lewis
Release Date January 26th, 2007
Published January 25th, 2007
Jennifer Garner is a stunner. Those lips; perfectly bee stung. That body honed from spy play on TV's Alias. And that perfectly indefinable quality that stars have, the effortless ability to be ephemeral. She's got all the assets necessary for stardom and she needs every trick in the bag to make the light breezy romance of Catch and Release work.
A romantic comedy that desperately wants to be more than it is, a female Cameron Crowe movie, an examination of life, death and grief, a sexy romp. The thin characters and thinner premise can only manage a surface level affability that, with a lesser actress in the lead would fail miserably.
Gray (Garner) has lost the love of her life. Her fiance Grady decided to go skiing days before their wedding and died in an accident on the slopes. At his funeral she is trapped with his family and their mutual friends and desperately wants to escape. Hiding in a bathroom she is mortified to accidentally witness Grady's best friend Fritz (Timothy Olyphant) hooking up with the caterer. Gray never liked Fritz before and this does little to improve things.
Unfortunately for Gray; Fritz is staying at the same place she is. Unable to move into the home she was to share with her fiancee, Gray moves in with their closest friends Sam (Kevin Smith) and Dennis (Sam Jaeger). Over the course of the week after Grady's death these four characters each deal with grief in their own unique ways and are tested by revelations about Grady's life that no one, except maybe Fritz might have expected.
The story of Catch and Release wants to be smarter and deeper than it is. Director Susannah Grant, a screenwriter (Charlotte's Web, In Her Shoes) by trade, directing her first feature, at times evokes a lighter version of the warm, nostalgic prose style of Cameron Crowe. What she lacks is Crowe's wit and ear for great dialogue.
The subject of Catch and Release is grief and how different people deal with it. But this is a romantic comedy so, much more time is devoted to developing roadblocks to romance than to delving deeper into the psyches of these characters where director Susannah Grant really seems to want to go. Why else would the movie devote so much time to each characters own quirky way of dealing with their friends death.
Romantic comedy formula tells you that when a male and female character loathe one another; they will eventually fall in love. This leaves the writer-director the challenge of finding ways to put up roadblocks to the couples eventual happiness. In Catch and Release, writer-director Susannah Grant has few new tricks up her sleeve.
There is nothing new here. Grant follows the romance formula. Her only hope was that her stars would be likable enough for us to feel comfortable inside the formula. And we are comfortable. Jennifer Garner is warm and sensitive and easy to fall for. Timothy Olyphant is roguish and charming and we root for him to redeem himself after his wretched introduction.
Then there is the movie's secret weapon, writer-director Kevin Smith. The man behind Silent Bob isn't much of an actor, as he readily admits, but trading off his famously self effacing personality, Smith's self deprecation and vocal mannerisms are terrifically funny. Whenever the film seems to lag a little Smith energizes things with a good joke. It's a bit of a cheat, Smith's Sam threatens to become more of a comic device than a character, but Smith is so much fun that you are unlikely to notice.
Catch and Release teeters on the verge of complete collapse. However, thanks to the megawatt smile of star Jennifer Garner and her unending likability, Catch and Release is a passably entertaining romantic comedy worth your time on DVD or cable in a few months.
