By giving a bit of modern edge to the romantic comedy formula, today’s “Catch and Release” fishes for the date-movie crowd with passable results. It’s also another attempt to establish the pouty-lipped TV actress Jennifer Garner as a movie star.
First time feature director Susannah Grant — screenwriter of “Erin Brockovich,” “Charlotte’s Web” and a number of other high-profile pictures — scripts this semi-original tale of a cute crunchy-granola bride forced to grieve the death of her finacee on the eve of their wedding as set in a picturesque Boulder, Colo. It resists the “chick flick” ghetto by playing up the love story’s sporty/outdoorsy backdrop and by giving the female protagonist-in-mourning a support system of her late beau’s three male buddies.
The question of which of these guys will become her future prince charming is quickly answered.
As most women know, there’s nobody sexier — at least in our deranged, self-destructive fantasies — than The Bad Boy. So when Gray Wheeler (Garner) finds herself surrounded by her late fiancee’s cuddly, chubby roommate Sam (clownishly played by director Kevin Smith); his sensitive, adoring business partner Dennis (Sam Jaeger): or, his womanizing, emotionally stunted childhood pal Fritz (Timothy Olyphant), she gradually finds herself attracted to the riskiest option at hand.
And why is it that women so often think they can reform you good-looking rogues out there? Because movies like this one brainwash us into believing it.
The narrative’s twist serves as a way to try to justify why the heroine rather quickly starts shagging the hot guy on the sofa-bed in the next room. It looks like the dearly departed was having an affair and sired a son with a flighty floozy. Played with funny likeability by the little-seen Juliette Lewis, Maureen arrives on the scene looking for child support and to de-idealize Gray’s dead sweetheart.
As the characters fly-fish, fight and work through their feelings together, events roll along with a gentle ease that distinguishes this from so many in-your-face big studio productions. But “Catch and Release” also lacks affecting depth. Mrs. Ben Affleck’s impeccable beauty and natural manner certainly give her the bearing of a film actress, but Garner still somehow lacks the expressiveness and dramatic range of a major leading lady. She looks better on the red carpet than on the silver screen.
‘Catch and Release’
Starring: Jennifer Garner,
Timothy Olyphant, Kevin Smith
Director: Susannah Grant
Rated R for sexual content, language and some drug use
