Catch and Release

This movie starts with the funeral of Gray (Jennifer Garner)'s fiancé Grady. His friend Fritz (Timothy Olyphant) has sex with a server. Dennis (Sam Jaeger) is insanely responsible and his other friend Sam (Kevin Smith) is having his own difficulties. But Fritz is hiding a secret. Grady has been sending $3000 a month to a woman (Juliette Lewis) in LA.

For a movie starting from a funeral, this has a lot of light hearted humor. Most of that is due to Kevin Smith's work. Writer/director Susannah Grant has put on a complicated heart warming struggle. It's not an easy subject to go from a depressed angry place. Jennifer Garner makes those parts work. The movie struggles when it gets to more traditional rom-com space. Overall there are enough interesting moments and Kevin Smith cracking jokes to make this a good movie.

She has dimples in the right places, an upper lip that looks like a hammer just hit it, and acting not always superior, but she gets the best roles Hollywood can offer a young woman. As that Julia Roberts glides into middle age, her younger version, Jennifer Garner may be the heir apparent but not for her role as the heroine of Catch and Release. Susannah Grant, who penned Julia's triumphant Erin Brockovich, tries to direct Garner as Gray Wheeler, but with much less energy and a poorer script.

Wheeler has just before the wedding lost her fiancé to a skiing accident. Not a bad premise that she discovers throughout the film more than she should about his life away from her. As she does about herself as she investigates his finances and romances. The film has nothing new to say about grief or healing, just about unchecked lusts for love and food (the latter the province of Kevin Smith, whose turn as the sloppy, overweight lovable friend, is sometimes funny, as when erotic massage therapist Maureen, played by Juliette Lewis, literally jumps his bones.

That Wheeler falls into the cute arms of Timothy Oliphant's Fritz is a given for this lightweight chick flick that would have us believe she would fall for a womanizer who scores a babe in the bathroom at the funeral while the grieving Wheeler listens aghast behind the shower curtain. That heavy-set Smith's Sam should overeat and have the best ironic comic lines could be predicted the minute you see Clerk's director on screen. That 60's Simon and Garfunkel type of music with a message should appeal to the audience of the 21st century, which may not demand character development in order to understand plot.

Catch and Release, a multiuse title referring to both the loss and a fishing motif, is a romantic comedy whose romance is low-grade (she just lost her fiancé for goodness sake) and comedy low-ball. Witnessing this failure should make you as sick as Sam after binge eating bags of potato chips.

The opening scene of C&R could have been me when my best friend died. Susannah Grant (and Jennifer Garner with her tremendous acting) has put a touching visual to that permanent loss of a loved one. The coming together of these friends, each mourning in their own way and trying to figure out how to move forward, is captured with humor and at times is sadly haunting. Each character looks for a way to stay connected, despite their loss. The use of periods of silence with the camera hanging on an actor's face is effective in communicating all the subtext involved in love, loss and friendship. Although it was easy for me to connect to each character, it may not be so for everyone. There are draws in this movie for everyone, however. Kevin Smith is wonderfully funny. Timothy Olyphant is beautiful to watch and Ms. Grant has used his beauty (and his fantastically revealing facial expressions) to the film's advantage. Jennifer Garner is . . . Jennifer Garner. She's fabulous. I loved this movie and can't wait to see it again.

The title of Susannah Grant's 2006 film refers to the practice of catching a fish for sport then releasing it (rather than frying, broiling, or sauteeing it). The central character Gray (played most fetchingly by Jennifer Garner) is coming to terms with the death of her fiancé and in the process learning a good deal more about him than she thought there was to know. Loosening up about two-thirds through the film "in the company of his friends: lighthearted and comic Sam, hyper-responsible Dennis, and, oddly enough, his old childhood buddy Fritz, an irresponsible playboy whom she'd previously pegged as one of the least reliable people in the world" (as IMDb puts it), she admits that though she never told her fiancé or his friends, she abhors their practice of catching and releasing fish for sport. "If you're going to put a poor fish through the agony of being caught, you ought to have the decency to eat it" (that's a paraphrase).

"Catch and release" seems intended as a symbol of the coming to terms with the loss not only on the part of Gray, but also on the part of the fiancé's friends and mother (played effectively by Fiona Shaw). All of them have significant adjustments to make. But the association of this mental and emotional process with the abhorrent act of torturing a fish doesn't seem to me to work. The psychic process emphasizes the person dealing with loss (the fisherman, as it were), while the sport seems to emphasize the poor fish (which suffers in the catching, while the fisherman invests no psychic effort whatsoever in releasing it).

Though the film invites viewers to reflect on the patience that a significant loss demands of us that we may release and let go, it doesn't really drive the point home. Like the fishing metaphor, the film seems to be more about the catching of the next fish (a new love interest).

A romantic comedy a bit difficult to believe but with good acting and a strong song score. Jennifer Garner and Tim Olyphant were particularly strong in their roles.