Review of Catch and Release (2006) by Joachim H — 02 Sep 2009

As someone who adores Jennifer Garner I honestly was not expecting Catch And Release to be so bad. Garner as always gives a charming performance but is mired in material so stock and contrived that it becomes moot. I feel like you have to go out of your way to make Kevin Smith boring, but somehow writer/director Susannah Grant (writer of much better films like In Her Shoes and Erin Brockovich) manages just that. The film's plot jumps from idiotic to laughably unrealistic situation and never decides which (if any) character to focus on. The romantic situation centers on Jennifer Garner's character Gray falling in love with her dead fiance's (Grady, who picked these names?) roomate Fritz (seriously who picked these names?) played by Timothy Olyphant, a character without a personality or a moral compass (we first meet him having unprotected sex with a caterer at a funeral). Then there's the all too common scene where Fritz walks in on something he's not supposed to hear and leaves, offended, until the end of the film when Gray, with a fresh outlook on life, moves to LA to find him. I'm not spoiling anything; anyone with half a brain can figure out how this movie is going to end. It would have been more consistent with his character to have her fly to LA only to find him already in bed with another woman. Olyphant is too creepy to play a romantic lead anyway and should stick to roles like the villain in Die Hard 4 or at the very least play a twisted sort of stalker-type love interest.

If you love yourself at all, skip this movie.