Lieben und lassen

A bit overlong it may be (it is), but it is very likeable. That is, if you are not fed up or generally annoyed by romantic comedies. Jennifer Garner is someone almost everyone can relate to and an indiviual that most people can fall in love with. Or at least find enchanting.

And then you have Timothy Olyphant. A really good actor, who can be tough, but also very fragile and loving. Something his character totally plays into. The cast in general is pretty good, having to keep the audiences attention for that long. It has the usual trappings of romantic movies, but that was to expect and nothing that should void the fun you can have with the movie

A romantic comedy a bit difficult to believe but with good acting and a strong song score. Jennifer Garner and Tim Olyphant were particularly strong in their roles.

The title of Susannah Grant's 2006 film refers to the practice of catching a fish for sport then releasing it (rather than frying, broiling, or sauteeing it). The central character Gray (played most fetchingly by Jennifer Garner) is coming to terms with the death of her fiancé and in the process learning a good deal more about him than she thought there was to know. Loosening up about two-thirds through the film "in the company of his friends: lighthearted and comic Sam, hyper-responsible Dennis, and, oddly enough, his old childhood buddy Fritz, an irresponsible playboy whom she'd previously pegged as one of the least reliable people in the world" (as IMDb puts it), she admits that though she never told her fiancé or his friends, she abhors their practice of catching and releasing fish for sport. "If you're going to put a poor fish through the agony of being caught, you ought to have the decency to eat it" (that's a paraphrase).

"Catch and release" seems intended as a symbol of the coming to terms with the loss not only on the part of Gray, but also on the part of the fiancé's friends and mother (played effectively by Fiona Shaw). All of them have significant adjustments to make. But the association of this mental and emotional process with the abhorrent act of torturing a fish doesn't seem to me to work. The psychic process emphasizes the person dealing with loss (the fisherman, as it were), while the sport seems to emphasize the poor fish (which suffers in the catching, while the fisherman invests no psychic effort whatsoever in releasing it).

Though the film invites viewers to reflect on the patience that a significant loss demands of us that we may release and let go, it doesn't really drive the point home. Like the fishing metaphor, the film seems to be more about the catching of the next fish (a new love interest).

She has dimples in the right places, an upper lip that looks like a hammer just hit it, and acting not always superior, but she gets the best roles Hollywood can offer a young woman. As that Julia Roberts glides into middle age, her younger version, Jennifer Garner may be the heir apparent but not for her role as the heroine of Catch and Release. Susannah Grant, who penned Julia's triumphant Erin Brockovich, tries to direct Garner as Gray Wheeler, but with much less energy and a poorer script.

Wheeler has just before the wedding lost her fiancé to a skiing accident. Not a bad premise that she discovers throughout the film more than she should about his life away from her. As she does about herself as she investigates his finances and romances. The film has nothing new to say about grief or healing, just about unchecked lusts for love and food (the latter the province of Kevin Smith, whose turn as the sloppy, overweight lovable friend, is sometimes funny, as when erotic massage therapist Maureen, played by Juliette Lewis, literally jumps his bones.

That Wheeler falls into the cute arms of Timothy Oliphant's Fritz is a given for this lightweight chick flick that would have us believe she would fall for a womanizer who scores a babe in the bathroom at the funeral while the grieving Wheeler listens aghast behind the shower curtain. That heavy-set Smith's Sam should overeat and have the best ironic comic lines could be predicted the minute you see Clerk's director on screen. That 60's Simon and Garfunkel type of music with a message should appeal to the audience of the 21st century, which may not demand character development in order to understand plot.

Catch and Release, a multiuse title referring to both the loss and a fishing motif, is a romantic comedy whose romance is low-grade (she just lost her fiancé for goodness sake) and comedy low-ball. Witnessing this failure should make you as sick as Sam after binge eating bags of potato chips.

Is there a production company somewhere that specializes in churning out the kind of banal, unoffensive films that are frequently used as in-flight movies, and if so, is it responsible for this film?

A flight from London to Chicago happens to be where I saw this movie, and even with absolutely nothing else to do or distract me, I had trouble staying with it. "Catch and Release" isn't bad. It's too safe to be bad. Rather, it's painfully uninspired. It's the kind of movie you simply can't imagine anyone getting up the energy to make. Was there really a screen writer out there who thought this story needed desperately to be told, and actually went to the trouble to tell it? Was there really a director who decided he had to bring this story to the screen, a cinematographer who put effort into planning shots? Did any of the actors read this script and think it was a project they simply had to be involved with? Apparently, because we have the movie itself as proof that at least someone thought it was worth brining to audiences. And there are decent things about it, notably Juliette Lewis, who gives a delightful performance as a new-age hippie struggling with motherhood, who makes you wish the movie was about her every time she appears on screen. Jennifer Garner, who the movie is supposed to be about, fades into the background, because neither she as an actress nor the character as written is capable of drawing our attention to herself. The script is too timid to allow any dramatic conflict to last more than a couple of scenes, so loose ends are neatly tied up with assembly-line efficiency.

This is film-making at its most disposable.

Grade: C