A woman faced with a tragedy discovers the man she loved was not all she imagined him to be in this romantic comedy-drama. Grey (Jennifer Garner) was a beautiful woman who found the man of her dreams in Grady Douglas, and was looking forward to spending the rest of her life with him until he suddenly died only a few days before they were to be married. With her wedding turned into an impromptu funeral, Grey is emotionally devastated but has to deal with the practicalities of her new life alone,
including moving out of the house she shared with Grady. Short on cash and in need of emotional support, Grey moves in with two longtime friends, sloppy but philosophical Sam (Kevin Smith) and well-meaning but tightly wound Dennis (Sam Jaeger). Grey also finds herself often chatting with Fritz (Timothy Olyphant), Grady's best friend, through she's always regarded him as a sleazeball. As time passes, Grey discovers that Grady had a secret life he never shared with her -- including a young son from a previous relationship -- and as she tries to come to terms with the past of her former fiancé, she struggles to put her new life on track, and finds herself reevaluating her long-held feelings about Fritz. Catch and Release was the first directorial effort from screenwriter Susannah Grant, whose script credits include Erin Brockovich, 28 Days, and In Her Shoes. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
The film suffers from a style that settles for pleasant or touching at the cost of spontaneous or impassioned. Too bad, because Ms. Garner is a genuinely pleasing presence.
Were it not for [Kevin] Smith's mildly amusing antics, it might have been necessary to attach a warning to the movie about the dangers of watching it whilst operating heavy machinery.
A story of self-discovery Catch and Release is ... well it's horribly, horribly dull is what it is. It's like an entire season of a mediocre primetime soap opera squeezed into a couple of hours.
Catch and Release will not cause Ben Affleck any husband-envy. It's a harmless romantic comedy that will garner Garner no awards and middling success at the box office.
Suffice it to say that when the best thing you can say about a movie is the soundtrack was decent (catch the old Lemonheads tune in the beginning), it's not worth the trip to the theater.
By the conclusion of the film, Catch and Release transformed itself from a risk-taking romantic comedy with a darkly humorous lining into a stereotypically syrupy outing...
Garner is likable, but the film is so leisurely and meandering that it never quite builds a pulse to engage the emotions the way Grant so obviously strives.
Garner must have been thinking of puppies being drowned throughout most of the filming, because in almost every frame she appears as sad-faced, puffy-cheeked, and red-eyed as Renee Zellweger on a bad day.
Even with Smith involved, Catch and Release isn't the sort of film a guy would generally go to see alone, but it does make for a decent date movie. She'll enjoy the romantic elements and he'll likely find it unobjectionably entertaining.
The multiple story threads make it a little unfocused from a thematic standpoint, but it's a generally well-executed lark, neither too serious nor too silly for its subject matter.
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