Catharsis and Release
Jennifer Garner, Timothy Olyphant, Kevin Smith, Juliette Lewis

Review by Breanne Boland February 8, 2007 Issue

The more recent branches of this film’s family tree go like this: first there was The Big Chill, which helped rear Garden State, which begat Catch and Release. Call it reeling-from-trauma cinema. An earth-shaking event (such as someone’s untimely death) brings together a scattered group of friends, acquaintances, and family. Revelations are revealed; memories are remembered; things are gotten off of chests. Issues are come to terms with. And other such complex hard-to-reverse phrases.

It’s all true in Catch and Release. Like Garden State, it has a cast of hip younger actors and a soundtrack full of acoustic-like indie rock; like The Big Chill, people air their dirty laundry over dinners and are inspired by free spirits. There’s a map to follow and In Her Shoes and Erin Brockovich writer Susannah Grant, rarely deviates on her first film as director.

But you know why movies like this are made? Why story after story of people discovering things about themselves and their loved ones while having a total eclipse of the heart exist? They’re satisfying. Particularly when they feature actors like Jennifer Garner, Juliette Lewis, Kevin Smith, and Timothy Olyphant all doing what they do best. Garner is bittersweet, Olyphant is charming, and the collected skill of the cast keeps a theme prone to navel-gazing from being too self-absorbed.

On the eve of her wedding, Garner’s character named Gray Wheeler, finds that her fiancÈ Grady has died. The flowers ordered for the ceremony are instead used for the funeral. While sorting out his affairs, Gray begins to discover things about Grady: that he has a mysterious million dollars in a savings account, that he pays child support, that he has a child at all. She also finds his three best friends knew these things and hid them for years, despite also being friends with her. Olyphant’s character Fritz, whom Gray had always hated, benefits the most from these shifting relationships — what initially starts as nice, distracting make-out sessions begins to develop into something more — although, naturally, complications arise.

Though it’s formulaic, the characters are, for the most part, allowed depth and detail enough to offset the fact that we know what will happen. Grant’s depiction of grief observed and then interrupted is sensitive, but leavened with enough quirkiness to keep it from being excessively weepy or depressing. It’s still a little too serious to be labeled a romantic comedy, but the general uplift after the film is as satisfying as the fluffiest bon-bon minus the artificial aftertaste of saccharine.

If only they hadn’t shown Kevin Smith eating every time he was onscreen. Ugh.

Bottom line: a delightful airing of dirty laundry

Dreamgirls

Jennifer Hudson and Eddie Murphy bring the charisma and amazing musical numbers and BeyoncÈ Knowles brings a fairly blank surface onto which Diana Ross’s legacy is projected. Dreamgirls is satisfying the way a musical should be, with fights carried out in song, glittering musical numbers, and lots of references to actual pop culture history.

Murphy reveals that he missed his calling by being born too late to be a 1950s soul singer. Knowles has the voice to play a certain 1960s icon, and she looks surprisingly believable in mod and disco fashions, but her quiet speaking voice and wide-eyed stare don’t quite carry off the cultural coup her character is supposed to have achieved. Still, it’s a well-produced, slick musical perfect for those of us who like that kind of thing. Just quietly ignore that a lot of the songs aren’t as good as those of the period in which this movie takes place.

Coming Attractions

Feb. 9
Hannibal Rising - I’ve always enjoyed thinking of Hannibal Lecter as the most decadent person ever — he drinks fine wine, he reads the best books, and his culinary tastes just roam a little further a field than normal. But no, that’s not enough; we must have origins, and sequels. Sigh.

Norbit - You know, seeing Eddie Murphy be so brilliant in Dreamgirls just makes these fat suit movies of his more depressing. This time, he makes fun of soft-spoken men, fat people, and Asian people! Everybody wins!

Feb. 16
Daddy’s Little Girls - Well, at least there’ll only be one movie with a dude dressed as a large woman in theaters, as Tyler Perry only directs this one. Gabrielle Union is a successful attorney who has to deal with familial expectations when she falls for a blue-collar single father.

Ghost Rider - Nicolas Cage and Eva Mendes star in this adaptation of a second-tier (at best) Marvel comic title. Still, if movies like this are the price we have to pay for Spiderman, so be it.

Breach - The very-good Chris Cooper and the potentially good Ryan Phillipe are FBI agents, and Phillipe must expose his mentor’s treason. Directed and written by the same gent who gave us Shattered Glass; hopefully he has the same touch with this, also a true story.

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