Courtesy of Columbia Pictures
Catch and Release
Rating: 3/5
Director: Susannah Grant
Starring: Jennifer Garner, Kevin Smith, Timothy Olyphant, and Sam Jaeger
Now playing: Galleria 6
While watching “Catch and Release,” one is unsure whether to hate the film for what it is, or love it for what it isn’t. What it is, is an odd, slightly stilted mix of romantic comedy and drama, with a lead who looks extremely uncomfortable in her own skin. What it isn’t is a typical Hollywood romantic comedy.
Gray (Jennifer Garner), soon-to-be-bride turned nearly widow, is mourning the death of her fianc‚e Grady. Gray takes comfort in her late fianc‚e’s friends, benignly funny Sam (comic relief provided by Kevin Smith,) and Fritz (Timothy Olyphant, miscast) whom Grey assumes to be bit of a skeeze, and whom the audience recognizes from moment one as Act Two love interest.
Director Susannah Grant makes her directorial debut after writing, among other women-championing films, “Erin Brockovich” and “28 days.” She keeps things plodding along, not uninterestingly, but with little ingenuity.
Things are falling dully and unremarkably into place when Grey makes a startling discovery about Grady’s past – namely that he had a young son with massage therapist Maureen (a flighty Juliette Lewis) who shows up unexpectedly one afternoon. Now forced to come to terms with the loss not only of the man she loved but also her image of that man, Gray must make nice with her new not-quite-stepson and his mother. Hilarity ensues.
There are a few funny moments, mostly supplied by Kevin Smith as Sam, bespectacled, berobed and bepajamed, and in his natural habitat. Slightly glib but always ready with a deep, semi-apropos quote stolen from a Celestial Seasonings tea box, Smith plays the man we imagine he himself would be if he hired a makeup artist to make him look like he just got out of bed.
For comic relief, Sam achieves a measure of depth, and here’s where “Catch and Release” diverges most notably from Hollywood formulas. These normally two-dimensional characters become almost three-dimensional, although perhaps struggling not to the extent one would in real life, but to a much greater extent than usual in the typical romantic comedy. Which, admittedly, is barely at all. A nice departure from Hollywood occurs when Maureen admits to Sam that she can’t raise this child, “it’s just too hard,” and then the convenient, unconvincing but completely expected plot device (such as Maureen disappearing without child in tow and Gray stepping in as mother figure to create a budding, befuddled family unit with previously untamable skeeze friend) fails to appear. And we thank the film for giving us a little credit. Still, the ending feels slapped on by the grubbing hands of producers insistent on the requisite romantic comedy d‚nouement. It’s unnecessary; the film would conclude in a much subtler, gentler place if it ended ten minutes earlier.
Because at heart this is a timeworn story, it would be nice if “Catch and Release” had something new to say, but it doesn’t. Its timid divergences from formula end up being little more than a tease, failing to deliver by succumbing to the drag of convention. The better ending would have been more ambiguous but also more contemplative, leaving us to ruminate on the nature of loss and the way these characters cope. Unfortunately, while we watch the players wriggle through a nearly adequate script, we also watch them do all the hackneyed two-dimensional things. Guy gets girl, girl loses guy, guy gets girl – we’ve seen it before, and while “Catch and Release” is not as exasperatingly common, it is still common, spoon feeding us its tried-and-true doctrines of love conquering all, of living in the moment and of being yourself when you’re not letting your hair down. Most importantly, the film suggests that we should learn not to treasure our initial misconceptions, but to look further and embrace reality. A reality that, in the film’s idealized Colorado setting, is eminently embraceable. So embraceable, in fact, that the moral falls flat. Why not enjoy the weather when it’s beautifully sunny?