PREMIERE.COM'S REVIEW (posted 1/26/07)

Time doesn't just slow down while you're watching Catch and Release — it actually comes to a dead stop. This tedious drama, which marks the directorial debut of Erin Brokovich screenwriter Susannah Grant, has been sitting on the shelf for over a year, and were it not for the presence of high-profile personalities like Jennifer Garner and Kevin Smith, the studio probably would have sold it off to the Lifetime network months ago. There's certainly no reason that moviegoers should have to fork over upwards of $10 to catch the film on the big screen, no matter how much they might be rooting for Garner to find her career footing now that Alias is off the air.

Speaking of that late, great ABC series, it's sad to think that Garner will probably have to wait years until she finds another role that's as rich and as challenging as globe-trotting super-spy Sydney Bristow. In the meantime, she's stuck playing one-note characters like Gray Wheeler, a bride-to-be whose seemingly perfect life is thrown into turmoil when her fiancé Grady dies on a fishing trip days before their wedding. Alias fans will recall that Sydney experienced a similar tragedy (twice I might add) during the course of the series, and in both cases she funneled her grief into some awesome ass-whuppings. Sadly, Gray isn't a covert CIA agent, which means Garner has to spend the bulk of the film moping about, despite the best efforts of pals Sam (Smith) and Dennis (Sam Jaeger) to cheer her up.

Adding to her woes is her discovery that Grady was hiding some big secrets, most notably the fact that he had fathered a son with a flighty massage therapist (Juliette Lewis) who subsequently blows into town when her monthly support checks stop showing up. In the wake of these revelations, Gray falls out of love with her former fiancé and falls in love with his best friend Fritz (Deadwood's Timothy Olyphant), a guy she'd previously written off as an overgrown child. For his part, Fritz seems remarkably comfortable with the knowledge that he's bunking up with his dead buddy's girl. Naturally, a series of misunderstandings threatens to keep these two crazy kids from walking off into the sunset together, but don't worry, the happy ending is never really in doubt.

Catch and Release is such a bland example of its genre, it may as well have been titled A Romantic Drama Starring Jennifer Garner. This isn't even a case where the film's numerous clichés can be forgiven because of a great cast or a strong script. There's a distinct lack of energy to the proceedings that suggests that Grant never really understood how to tell this story or why it needed to be told in the first place. As written, this is a film about a life-changing event where none of the characters seem to change all that much.

Grant's direction is as lazy as her screenplay; she stages all of the action in the foreground so there's no depth to any of the images, and despite shooting much of the movie on location, she manages to make the town of Boulder look like a studio backlot. It doesn't appear as if she's attuned to coaxing nuanced performances out of her actors either. While no one in the cast proves to be unwatchably bad, they never dig past the surface of their characters. At least Garner and Olyphant's natural charm allows them to coast through the movie mostly unscathed. (As for Smith, he's well aware that he was hired to just be himself and wisely doesn't attempt to act.) Still, you'd never know based on their performances here that they are both actors who are capable of great range. For that, you'll have to rent the DVDs of Alias and Deadwood, which, come to think of it, is a better way to spend your time than sitting through Catch and Release.

— Ethan Alter