MOVIE REVIEW: 'Catch and Release'


Movie review in the Friday, Jan. 26 Oregonian ...




Writer/director Susannah Grant has done some decent-to-solid work as a scribe ("Erin Brockovich," "In Her Shoes"). So why did she make her feature directorial debut on her worst script?

I’m sorry, but there's no nice way to put this: "Catch and Release" is an unfunny, undramatic comedy-drama that asks us to care about a bunch of idiots who make asinine choices while lying to themselves and each other.

Gray (Jennifer Garner) learns her dead fiancé was a cheating fraud. So -- of course! -- she moves into his room, in the house he shared with a doormat (Sam Jaeger) and a drunk glutton (Kevin Smith) who bounces back way too quickly from a suicide attempt.

Gray tolerates a New Age casualty (Juliette Lewis) with intrusive connections to her fiancé. Gray gets sexy with her fiancé's charming/sleazy friend/enabler (Timothy Olyphant). (This happens within days of the funeral, by the way.) And everyone engages in barely connected nonsense between moping-bouts -- all backed by a soft-rock soundtrack so limp, it makes Dan Fogelberg sound like Krokus.

If you asked the filmmakers to explain this foolishness (which somehow manages to be both irrational and formulaic), they'd probably answer, "The movie's like real life! It's messy!" But "Catch and Release" doesn't feel like real life; it feels like showfolk trying to imagine what real life is like.

Oregonian movie reviews (OregonLive.com)

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Posted: Sat - February 3, 2007 at 12:11 PM        

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