Movie Review: Catch and Release

January 26, 2007 by Brendan
Filed under: Movie News, Movie Reviews

Movie Review: Catch and Release In Catch and Release, Jennifer Garner stars as Grey, a young woman who recently lost her fiance, Grady, in a tragic accident. She seeks comfort in her two best friends (played by Kevin Smith and Sam Jaeger) but despises her fiance’s best friend and best man, Fritz (Timothy Olyphant). But with Grady’s body just barely in the ground and probably still warm, Grey finds that he was keeping secrets from her involving mysterious bank accounts, strange women and illegitimate kids and before you know it, Grey is in bed with Fritz and the fiance is nothing but a distant memory.

I’m usually a sucker for a good romantic comedy but Catch and Release is none of the above. It’s not good, not romantic and there’s very little comedy. I really don’t have a lot of nice things to say about this movie. I mean a movie about some chick jumping in the sack with her future husband’s best friend not only makes her a scumbag but it makes him the lowest of the low in the world of men and best friends. I’m trying to picture myself doing that to one of my best friends and although I could see at least one doing it to me, I just couldn’t do it. I would at least wait until his corpse started rotting before I even considered the notion. I’m not even sure they had put the shovel in the ground before these two were seriously considering going for a roll in the hay.

I guess that’s the one thing about Catch and Release that irked me beyond all levels of irkness. But on top of that, I didn’t really find any of the characters to be at all charming, interesting or terribly likeable. Jennifer Garner’s a cute gal with great dimples but this is far and away her worst movie to date. Kevin Smith has got a serious weight issue and I may never forgive him for the donkey scene in Clerks 2. Timothy Olyphant has the big, weasley smile that just makes me want to knock his teeth to the back of his throat. And Juliette Lewis – is there a more annoying voice in the history of Hollywood?

In the end, I think it’s quite obvious that I didn’t care for Catch and Release. I like my romantic comedies with a few laughs, a few tears and a smile on my face when all is said and done. Catch and Release made me want to punch out the two lead characters, put another on a diet and rip the tongue out of the mouth of yet another. My recommendation would be to pass on this one. There should be better movies coming sometime, somewhere down the pipe – one would hope. (3 out of 10)

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