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Review #382 of 365
Movie Review of Catch and Release (2007) [PG-13] 124 minutes
WIP™ Scale: $12.75
Where Viewed: Cinemark Century 16, Lakewood, CO
When 1st Seen: 29 January 2007
Time: 4:40 p.m.
Film's Official Website • Film's Trailer
DVD Release Date: 
Directed by: Susannah Grant ("Party of Five")
Written by: Susannah Grant (Charlotte's Web 2006)
Featured Cast (Where You Might Remember Him/Her From):
Jennifer Garner ("Alias") • Timothy Olyphant ("Deadwood") • Sam Jaeger (Lucky Number Slevin) • Kevin Smith (Clerks II) • Juliette Lewis (Starsky & Hutch) • Joshua Friesen ("Reunion") • Fiona Shaw (The Black Dahlia)
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Many people are saying that Catch and Release is the best film of the year so far. While they might not have seen Freedom Writers which really is the best film of the year, so far (as of 30 January—which, by the way is nearly 1/12th the way in to the year and, perhaps, too early to be worrying about bests of the year), Catch and Release has a lot going for it as a film in general. It's story is not as powerful as Freedom Writers nor as significant when it comes to changing the world. What is has that is very different, however, and something which no film to date as really captured for the world to see face front is the essence of difference between life in the heart of the urban west and the rest of the United States. USAers and citizens of the rest of the world are constantly bombarded with films depicting life primarily in three main regions of the USA: New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Occasionally, there's a southern setting or a western which bury themselves in stereotypes but never truly capture the value of the lifestyle. Truthfully, this is very hard to do in a television series let alone a movie. Upon settling into my seat to see Catch and Release and having little or no clue what the film was about or where it was set other than it probably had some sort of fishing theme and Jennifer Garner from "Alias" was in it, I was immediately taken in by the first subtle and then overt revelations that the film was set in Boulder, Colorado.
Jennifer Garner as Gray Wheeler(Click Still Photo to Purchase)
For many in the USA, Boulder is known for a few things: the University of Colorado, granola tree huggers who migrated there during the 60s and turned the town into hippie utopia where it still stands firmly entrenched, and, of course, Celestial Seasonings® herbal tea. As a kid, growing up in Colorado, before there was the tea, Boulder, to me was a mythical little town where my mom went to High School and kids and people had fun all the time. Driving up what she used to call the Boulder Toll Road, the booths were taken down the moment it was paid off, to visit my grandmother's oldest and dearest friend, Johnnie, she'd tell us fond stories of her days in Boulder. When we finally got there over the foot hills and down into the valley that snuggles the breathtaking foothill mountains behind the city, it really did seem like we were entering a mystical place to which God had given just a bit more of a blessing than normal. To this day, I still feel that way when I drive into town. But, beyond that, and I'm telling these stories not to avoid the film but to try to help coax people in to understanding something that is very personally important to me, that different feeling, while amplified in Boulder and to a degree in Colorado Springs as well, is a feature of life in urban western USA. I found it in Seattle, most of California, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Phoenix, Portland, Salt Lake City, and Boise. Denver and Seattle are probably the capitals of this feeling, lost to the shear enormity of Los Angeles. It is a feeling that can, in some ways be summed up in a study I once read conducted by a grad student or some such person who asked people from various regions of the USA, "Hi, I'm so and so, and I'm doing research for my grad program, and I'd like to ask you what you do?" The results were so startling to him or her, but not to people from the urban west. Nearly to a person, he or she found that people from the urban east would immediately provide a résumé as in, "I'm a Banker" or "I'm a doctor." Or "I'm a lawyer." People from the urban west, however, would say, "I am a skier." Or "I'm a hiker." Or "I'm a mountain biker." Or "I'm a rock climber." And so on. Fascinating, isn't it? Just to think about how people define themselves. Now, I don't mean any disrespect to the captains of industry in the urban east who fashion their lives around climbing the corporate ladders and accumulating vast wealth and power. Bravo and good show. We've got bankers, lawyers, and doctors in the urban west too. But in the urban west, one is not defined by what he or she does for a job, we are defined by what we do for life. It's a simple but not subtle difference.
"… Susannah Grant brewed up a pot of Red Zinger® and invited us over to share a cup in her porch swing staring out over the foothills and creations larger than we are reminding us to make peace with ourselves and our nature."
And no movie I've ever seen captures this better than Catch and Release. It's as if we have been allowed, for the first time, to open up the snow globe of Boulder as the example of this urban west lifestyle and peer in for real, to eavesdrop on what is going on in. What we find it curious at first and then urgently interesting. The story begins at the wake for Grady Douglas. He died doing what he loved outdoors but just before his planned wedding to Gray Wheeler (Jennifer Garner). As the wake goes on and everyone is very emotional, Gray escapes upstairs to get away from all of Grady's relatives and friends. She needs to be alone. Her peaceful reminiscing is disrupted by one of Grady's smarmy friends from LA, Fritz (Timothy Olyphant) who has decided that best friend's wake or not, mood of the occasion or not, a wake is as good a time as any to get some action.
Timothy Olyphant as Fritz(Click Still Photo to Purchase)
She hides behind the shower curtain until the deed is done, when she gets up, pulls back the curtain, gives him a disappointed look, and walks out. As the next few days unfold, we learn that Grady was the central spoke in a large wheel of great friends sort of holding them all together. His two housemates, Dennis (Sam Jaeger)—also his new fly fishing business partner--and Sam (Kevin Smith) are mourning equally over his loss with Gray. After inviting her to move in to Grady's room as she will no longer be able to afford the rental home she and Grady had just signed up to move in to, the three begin down a path of reconciliation. Dennis intends to build a Peace Garden in Grady's honor behind the Fly Fishing shop. Sam intends on drinking himself out of the misery while quoting all of the great quotations he's picked to go on the boxes of Celestial Seasoning® teas where he works. Gray hopes to find solace in his friends and take the time she needs to get over him. Ah, but life is not that simple, shortly after going through some of his stuff, Gray uncovers an account worth around a million dollars in Grady's name. He never mentioned its existence to her or his friends. Later, she finds out the man she loved and planned to spend the rest of her life with, was hiding a big secret. On his business-related trips to California and to see Fritz, he met a massage therapist named Maureen (Juliette Lewis) and theoretically fathered her son Mattie (Joshua Friesen). This revelation upends Gray's world.
Juliette Lewis as Maureen and Joshua Friesen as Mattie(Click Still Photo to Purchase)
How could she not have known? Why didn't he tell her? If Mattie is real, then he's Grady's true heir, something which Grady's mother, Mrs. Douglas (Fiona Shaw) cannot abide. These are the sorts of real life problems faced by people all the time. That part is not so different from a hundred other stories and films. What's different concerns the ethos and spirit of the people as they handle their circumstances. Their lifestyle is imminently concerned with each other and remembrance, getting outdoors, being with the world. The film is as fascinating from the stand point of learning what life in the urban west is really like as it is watching this group of close friends learn an important life lesson—don't let the people you love die before you really get to know them. Do everything you can to take down the barriers and realize that the most important things in life are not money, wealth, and power; but, rather, the web of friendships and connections we share with each other and our planet. If your life is spent in a box in a glass tower trying to get to a glass box on a higher floor, you'll get more satisfaction if you divert that same energy to climbing a bigger rock in the mountains as you watch the sunset. We have made our lives so unnecessarily complicated because that is what we have been told we should do. In the west, we constantly battle that notion. It's called a 'quality of life' thing, and it's pretty much why we don't offer up millions of dollar in incentives to get companies to move their HQs here. If you want to live someplace where you are measured by who you truly are and not by what you do for a living, or you think it would be cool to do what you love for a living, then the urban west is for you. Time to catch the spirit of the real you and release the baggage of the you of the past.
So, for me, Catch and Release was an important film in helping the rest of the world to understand a bit more intimately the peace of life we enjoy in the urban west. As a film, in general, in other ways, it was not earth shattering. It is a good love story. It is a good buddy bonding film. The principle acting is memorable but not out of this world. It's the kind of film that will be described as cute but not beautiful, soul-searching not life-changing, revealing but not sensationalistic, emotionally dynamic but not gut-wrenching. Writer / director Susannah Grant brewed up a pot of Red Zinger® and invited us over to share a cup in her porch swing staring out over the foothills and creations larger than we are reminding us to make peace with ourselves and our nature.
So, for me, Catch and Release was an important film in helping the rest of the world to understand a bit more intimately the peace of life we enjoy in the urban west. As a film, in general, in other ways, it was not earth shattering. It is a good love story. It is a good buddy bonding film. The principle acting is memorable but not out of this world. It's the kind of film that will be described as cute but not beautiful, soul-searching not life-changing, revealing but not sensationalistic, emotionally dynamic but not gut-wrenching. Writer / director Susannah Grant brewed up a pot of Red Zinger® and invited us over to share a cup in her porch swing staring out over the foothills and creations larger than we are reminding us to make peace with ourselves and our nature.
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Click for 'Review Lite' [a 150-word review of this film]
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Other Projects Featuring Catch and Release (2007)
Cast Members
Jennifer Garner
• Timothy Olyphant • Sam JaegerKevin Smith
• Juliette Lewis • Joshua FriesenFiona Shaw
Writer / Director
Susannah Grant
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Catch and Release (2007) Review-lite [150-word cap]
No prior film has captured the essence of life in the urban western USA so perfectly. Set in Boulder, Colorado, a valley town snuggling the breathtaking foothill mountains behind seeming like a mystical place which God gave just a bit more of a blessing than normal, serving here as a microcosm for what it means to be an urban westerner where people are defined not by what they do for a job but what they do for life. It's the story of Gray Wheeler (Jennifer Garner) whose fiancée dies in an outdoor adventure accident just before they were to wed. In the aftermath, she learns he's far from the man she thought. Director Susannah Grant brewed a pot of Red Zinger® and invited us to share a cup in her porch swing staring out over creations larger than we are reminding us to make peace with ourselves and our nature.
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