Catch and Release

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.

Greetings again from the darkness. There are a few great writers. There are a few great directors. There are very few great writer/directors. Susannah Grant has been known for her strong writing of "In Her Shoes" and "Erin Brokovich". Here her first real attempt at directing is not helped by her less than inspired script.

Never really sure if it aspires to be a statement on loss and human weakness or an awkwardly tender humorous love story, the film rambles along as if every day of production was unrelated to the those previous. Jennifer Garner (fresh off birthing a real life baby) is actually at her best in the opening scenes as she grieves over the loss of her fiancé. She doesn't fare quite so well in subsequent love scenes. Timothy Olyphant ("Deadwood") spends most of the film posing and grinning (with extraordinarily white teeth) at Garner. Kevin Smith is the comic relief and the endless stream of fat jokes grows tiresome quickly. Still Smith supplies a couple of the best moments in the film. Juliette Lewis is back with her customary weirdness, this time with kid in tow.

The two best parts of the film are the few amazing shots featuring the natural beauty of Boulder, Colorado and the nice little soundtrack with some real gems. Looking more like a Lifetime movie than a Hollywood release, this one lacks substance and depth. Here's hoping Ms. Grant's ego has been fed and she returns to her talent of writing quality stories.

Is there a production company somewhere that specializes in churning out the kind of banal, unoffensive films that are frequently used as in-flight movies, and if so, is it responsible for this film?

A flight from London to Chicago happens to be where I saw this movie, and even with absolutely nothing else to do or distract me, I had trouble staying with it. "Catch and Release" isn't bad. It's too safe to be bad. Rather, it's painfully uninspired. It's the kind of movie you simply can't imagine anyone getting up the energy to make. Was there really a screen writer out there who thought this story needed desperately to be told, and actually went to the trouble to tell it? Was there really a director who decided he had to bring this story to the screen, a cinematographer who put effort into planning shots? Did any of the actors read this script and think it was a project they simply had to be involved with? Apparently, because we have the movie itself as proof that at least someone thought it was worth brining to audiences. And there are decent things about it, notably Juliette Lewis, who gives a delightful performance as a new-age hippie struggling with motherhood, who makes you wish the movie was about her every time she appears on screen. Jennifer Garner, who the movie is supposed to be about, fades into the background, because neither she as an actress nor the character as written is capable of drawing our attention to herself. The script is too timid to allow any dramatic conflict to last more than a couple of scenes, so loose ends are neatly tied up with assembly-line efficiency.

This is film-making at its most disposable.

Grade: C

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.

A bit overlong it may be (it is), but it is very likeable. That is, if you are not fed up or generally annoyed by romantic comedies. Jennifer Garner is someone almost everyone can relate to and an indiviual that most people can fall in love with. Or at least find enchanting.

And then you have Timothy Olyphant. A really good actor, who can be tough, but also very fragile and loving. Something his character totally plays into. The cast in general is pretty good, having to keep the audiences attention for that long. It has the usual trappings of romantic movies, but that was to expect and nothing that should void the fun you can have with the movie