In her latest endeavor and big-screen directorial debut, "Erin Brokovich" writer Susannah Grant paints the mountain city of Boulder, Colo., as a wonderful, smiling, yet tragic place. The people downtown are happily cycling in spandex unitards, shopping and enjoying the great outdoors with an outdoorsman's paradise at their disposal.
Meanwhile for one circle of friends, paradise is lost as they battle the rocky terrain in their personal lives in the convoluted, yet underdeveloped story that is "Catch and Release."
This unconventional romantic-comedy centers on former "Alias" ass-kicker Jennifer Garner, who plays the bland — as her name implies — Gray Wheeler, a 20-something widowed on the eve of her wedding. Instead of packing for her honeymoon, Gray must instead tote her emotional baggage to her fiancé's funeral, where she has no idea how to cope with the situation without her better half, Grady, by her side.
Unable to pay for rental property on her own, the tragically single woman packs up her wedding gifts and shacks up with her fiancé's cronies — Dennis (Sam Jaeger), Grady's outdoor adventure business partner who has his own romantic agenda, and Sam, a slacker rarely seen outside the comfort of his striped bathrobe, and is oddly enough played by Silent Bob himself, Kevin Smith. Also thrown into the bereaved mix is visiting Hollywood playboy Fritz, a guy who uses sex as a coping mechanism — helping himself to seconds from the funeral caterer. And as if the walls of the three-room bachelor pad are not closing in enough on the rag-tag bunch of companions as they cope with their unexpected loss, enter blonde bimbo Maureen (Juliette Lewis), with her toddler son.
Surprise — as it turns out the deceased wasn't quite the perfect man Gray thought she knew, leaving her at the center of an emotional tug-of-war — she loves and misses Grady, but ultimately feels betrayed by his secrecy and must find a way to move on … in the arms of another, perhaps?
In drafting all of these twists and turns, Grant had to be looking for ways to compel the audience to follow the plot, but instead of troubling herself with the form, the "Party of Five" director pressed on, showing her flair for the dramatic — adding in a suicide attempt, love triangle and angry matriarchal figure for good measure. Throughout the multifaceted storyline, Grant attempts to create characters the audience can relate to, but winds up including too many untied strands to allow for proper development. Viewers can hardly be expected to empathize with characters they hardly even care about.
Jennifer Garner's latest attempt at the sweet and innocent leading lady is again in vain. She goes through the motions, but no raw emotion materializes. Her character appears strained as she tries to shed a tear in honor of someone who was supposed to be the love of her life, and she often comes across like a preteen who's been stood up by her date to the sixth-grade dance. It seems the whole tough-girl persona Garner developed in her role on "Alias" is all too hard to shed. She is better suited as a cunning agent, kicking and shooting Russian spies as she roundhouse kicks her way across the small screen — not sitting awkwardly in a wedding dress with a sour, pouty face.
Costar Timothy Olyphant ("Deadwood") turns in a solid performance in the role of the misunderstood womanizer, Fritz, but the real saving grace of the film comes from the supporting players, Smith and Lewis.
Kevin Smith proves he has a future outside of backward caps and trench coats — bathrobes and jerseys, and actual speaking roles. Although his character at first falls into the tangled web woven by the all-encompassing dramatic portion of plotline, he emerges as a voice of reason in the film. Early on, he attempts suicide with a vodka-prescription cocktail, again a plot point that is never really fleshed out, serving as an excuse for another obligatory heart-to-heart — but soon he is back to bestowing morsels of "Celestial Seasonings" wisdom upon his friends (an unlikely product placement, but helpful in lightening the mood).
Likewise, Lewis embraces her inner ditz in a role she has perfected over the years in such films as "Old School" and "Starsky and Hutch." Sporting flowing, bottle-blonde locks and confidently marching along in Payless platforms is the loopy masseuse Maureen. Sure, this time she's traded impromptu orgies for spelling out curse words and redirecting everyone's chi with herbal remedies, but she does it with great ease.
Swimming its way upstream in a little more than two hours, "Catch and Release" manages to deliver a handful of the standard romantic-comedy moments, but fails to grow to its full potential — this one is not quite a keeper.
Grade: 2 out of 5
