AFF Review: Catch and Release

The opening scene of Catch and Release is a funeral reception ... on what was supposed to be a wedding day. A tragic accident befell the groom during his bachelor-party weekend. We see the florist accidentally bringing wedding bouquets instead of funeral flowers, a multi-tiered cake stashed in a refrigerator, and a very sad young woman in black instead of white. She escapes to a bathroom and hides in the tub to cry, but suddenly is interrupted by a laughing couple who ducks into the bathroom for a quickie. The combination of touching drama and absurd comedy is excellent and promises a good quirky movie, full of dysfunction, dark humor and the unexpected.

Unfortunately, Catch and Release doesn't fulfill the potential of that well-balanced opening, and ultimately turns into a typical contemporary romantic comedy, with the stress on the romantic. It's still an interesting movie to watch, but the cliches can be a little grating at times, and even as a romantic comedy it never reaches the level of, say, The Truth about Cats and Dogs.

The film is set in Boulder, which provides a charming background that's a pleasant change of pace from LA/New York. After her fiance's funeral, Gray (Jennifer Garner) tries to return to as normal a life as possible. She moves in with her two male buddies, Sam (Kevin Smith) and Dennis (Sam Jaeger). Gray finds out that her fiance was secretly a millionaire, and that every month he sent money to some unknown person. Grady's California friend Fritz (Timothy Olyphant) sticks around to help Gray deal with these revelations, and maybe because he likes her, too. Is he becoming another friend, or something more?

Jennifer Garner looks so sad in the first scenes of the movie that even though she discovers her fiance is not quite the shining star he seemed, it's unbelievable that she would nonetheless fall for someone else so quickly after her fiance's untimely death. Even if it's a rebound, it's slightly distasteful to watch someone in mourning as she lunges to kiss a guy. Timothy Olyphant's portrayal of Fritz doesn't help the matter -- he's such a smirker that even when Fritz is shown to be a less shallow, more understanding guy, we still want to smack him for being a smug jerk.

Smith is essentially playing his public persona, right down to the quirks of speech (which are slightly cleaned up), but fortunately that portrayal works well for the character. Unsurprisingly, he gets all the best lines. Juliette Lewis, however, seems miscast as the New Age disciple/massage therapist Maureen. Her character is in a situation where few of the principal characters are likely to sympathize or be friendly with her, and then she's so irritating that their acceptance of her makes very little sense. However, the scene in which she gives Kevin Smith a massage is unforgettable -- the high point of the film. It was lovely to see Fiona Shaw as Grady's mother, although her role was slightly too Little Lord Fauntleroy-ish to be believable.

Catch and Release is Susannah Grant's feature directorial debut -- she's written/adapted Ever After, In Her Shoes and the upcoming Charlotte's Web. After the movie screened at Austin Film Festival, Grant noted that her first rough cut of Catch and Release was nearly three hours long. She cut a backstory involving Fritz, which sounds like it was unnecessary. But perhaps it was the cutting-down process that made some of the film's details confusing. Because Gary and Grady's new rental house and Dennis and Sammy's house looked so much alike, I didn't always understand where Gray was staying and why she was moving. Sammy is continually uttering platitudes he found on the side of Celestial Seasonings tea boxes, but it's unclear whether he works there or is just a manic fan of the tea. Apparently the recutting of the film also necessitated the syrupy ending, which is so stereotypically romantic-comedy that it lowered my opinion of the whole movie. (It also echoed the ending of The Player in a detrimental way.)

I've seen a number of low-budget indie films that attempt to portray the dynamics between a changing group of friends -- a stranger enters the mix, a friend dies, and so forth. Many of them are dull and overlong and too reliant on stereotypes. Catch and Release is head and shoulders above most of these films, but its right-turn into conventional romantic comedy is disappointing. I like romantic comedies, but the romantic relationship in Catch and Release didn't develop organically and believably from the movie's setup. It has its moments, but ultimately fails both as a low-concept friendship movie and as a romantic comedy.