Catch and Release

It begins by taking the typical formula of “girl unlocks the mystery of men and falls for a bad boy who ends up being nice and sensitive” and adds hearty attempts for cultural relevancy, courtesy of a gutless indie pop soundtrack, pre-weathered boot cut jeans on the male leads, and Kevin Smith.

The lengthy plot follows the travails of Gray, played by Jennifer Garner, who has lost her fianc퀌� and now must deal with the prospects of continuing without her man. Luckily for her, she has her friends to lean on, including a fat, slovenly, herbal tea-selling alcoholic, a dorky, undeveloped square and an unshaven bad boy who provides the movie with its PG-13 rating by having an unlit joint in his mouth for a total of two seconds.

As we progress further into the malarial mangrove swamps of the film, Gray and company come to learn that there was a lot more to the fianc퀌� than he told anyone, including the fact that he was rich and subsidizing a mistress for his business trips to Los Angeles. The mistress, a weird and kind of funny Juliette Lewis, shows up about halfway through the movie with a rambunctious, tow-headed kid, spouting hippie bullshit about chakras and glutens and claiming the kid belongs to the dead fianc퀌�.

He doesn’t, Jennifer Garner finds love again, everyone learns to remember the dead fianc퀌� for the good things that he did, the kid and mistress get the dead guy’s money so she doesn’t have to quit holistic massage school, they move in with Kevin Smith who needed direction in his life, and everything pretty much works out fine for all parties except the square guy, but he was a boner anyway.

It was easy to guess every single thing that was going to happen, and what each character would learn from the other characters, but that’s par for the course with this kind of movie.

The filmmakers at least deserve credit for trying to make their movie cutting edge, and to add more layers than one might find in the typical romantic comedy, and in this they are marginally successful.

Take the Death Cab for Cutie song featured prominently in the climactic driving montage at the film’s end. While I fucking hate that band, and the song came out something like two years ago, one is at least forced to recognize the effort made to be cool, although it certainly doesn’t work.

The fact that the sex scenes were embarrassingly un-sexy doesn’t mean they didn’t try and put sex scenes in to break things up a little. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Although they tried, the filmmakers just couldn’t pull off a Garden State, which, for the record, sucked too. So in the end, I was left suffering through two hours of boring, lame-ass date movie-type shit buoyed by OK acting and the fact that the characters all lived in a really nice house. Fans of these films, knock yourself out. You’ll probably like this one. Everyone else, save your seven dollars and go buy yourself a drink. At least it doesn’t take two hours to finish.