Jennifer Garner Movie:

		List Price: $38.96		Label: Columbia Pictures Salesrank: 55395 Released: May 8, 2007
		Our Price: $12.50
		Used Price: $11.55
		MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) Media: Blu-ray

Editorial Review:
Gray Wheeler just lost everything. But it could be the best thing that ever happened to her. After the death of her fiancé, Gray (Jennifer Garner) moves in with her late love’s best friends. While Sam (Kevin Smith) and Dennis (Sam Jaeger) do their best to cheer Gray up, Fritz (Timothy Olyphant) doesn’t seem to care. Once Gray breaks through Fritz’s defenses, however, she finally sees why her fiancé thought so highly of him. As they spend more time together, Gray learns that her chances for love have not died out with her fiancé. But when some surprise guests show up on their doorstep, it’ll take the love of all of her new friends to help Gray learn that life may be messy, but love is messier.

Description of Catch and Release [Blu-ray]:
Jennifer Garner's lips grow more Angelina-esque every year. In the romantic comedy Catch and Release, Garner (Alias, 13 Going On 30) plays Gray Wheeler, a young woman whose fiance dies unexpectedly before the wedding, leaving Gray unable to afford her home--so she moves in with her fiance's best friends, Sam (Kevin Smith, director of Clerks and Dogma) and Dennis (Sam Jaeger, Lucky Number Slevin). But the presence of another old friend named Fritz (Timothy Olyphant, Deadwood) leads to the unveiling of a secret: Gray's fiance had a child with another woman. Catch and Release lacks the clear story structure that most romantic comedies are built on, but trades it for a richer sense of the ambiguities of human relationships. Garner, though lovely and personable, is a bit bland--fortunately, she's surrounded by actors with all kinds of edges, including Smith (who shows an unexpected and uncloying earnest side), Fiona Shaw (from the Harry Potter movies) as the fiance's grieving mother, and Juliette Lewis (Cape Fear), who demonstrates once again her powers as a fearless and surprising actress. Catch and Release is an uneven movie, with a remarkably elegant visual style that sometimes clashes with the workmanlike dialogue, but it can't be written off as the same old Hollywood claptrap. Though a happy ending is inevitable, the path it takes has some surprising turns and flashes of unexpected emotional depth.- Bret Fetzer

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Catch and Release [Blu-ray] Reviews:
Great Elements, Ruined by Lousy Cliché
2009-11-08 - This movie could have been so much better. I have no problem with the actors(I have a thing for Jennifer Garner, and I really like Kevin Smith, so I can't give an impartial evaluation of the actors.) or their characters. The photography was gorgeous.

UNFORTUNATELY I GOT MY HOPES UP.

Unfortunately, right after a good enough setup, the writer plops in an element that are so tired and hackneyed and obvious I immediately said to myself "oh no, they're not going to do THAT..." If you have seen more than a handful of films that do not star explosions or CGI, you not only see the ending coming, IT CAN BEE SEEN FROM SPACE. It completely stinks and ruined the film for me. The fact it happens in a bathroom is especially fitting.

I would like to think it is the kind of thing that would immediately lower your grade in a scriptwriting class.

What makes it all the worse is that there are couple of times during the film (predictably, right when I was about to turn it off) where it misleads you into thinking they are going to go somewhere more creative.

But no, they go there.

Fall in love with the characters, Fall in love with the storyline, Fall in love again.
2009-08-19 - A woman's plans change abruptly when her fiance dies, and she starts to find things out about the guy, and starts to wonder if she even knew him at all.
She starts to dig further into the loops and tangles of his death with things she doesn't fully understand, and she begins an awkward but sweet friendship and love with her fiance's best friend she never liked, as he helps sort out the mess left behind.

So watchable
2009-08-18 - Not sure why this romantic dramedy stayed so far under the radar. The casting is perfect, the story is heartwarming and the couple are romantic as hell. I've sat through this repeatedly and enjoy it every time. Bonus - one of the sexiest sex scenes of all time (up there with Michelle Pfeiffer and Mel Gibson in Tequila Sunrise).

Romantic Comedy Right up there with Four Weddings and a Funeral
2009-08-15 -

The script is bare bones & bland,has been used 20 times before. That doesn't matter. Because the actors are pro's and they flesh out what the screenplay lacks with their creativity and make it special.
The Movie is about a guy who died and how his lovers,friends and family deal with his passing.Jennifer Garner really steals scenes in this movie as the bride that was robbed of her wedding. He best scene is when she sits in the tub wearing her wedding dress and catches one of his friends making love to a waitress at her husbands to be's funeral.
Director Kevin Smith & former child star Juliette Lewis both play a truly interesting characters, he works in advertising for Celestial Seasoning Tea Company and has the best zingers in the whole movie.He reminds me of the intellectual that works at the comic book store and imparts his sarcastic words of wisdom at everybody.
The characters reminded me a little of friends,only much more real and charming. Like this one guy,Jen's character hates at the beginning of the movie. She makes you hate him too. But as she grows and changes, and he grows up a bit you start to like him better. That my friends is good acting and fabulous character developement.

Film has potential but feels random and lacks arc
2009-07-20 - This review is for the Blu-Ray release, watched on a 42" Panasonic Plasma and BD35K player. Overall PQ 4/5 and AQ 4/5. The Film is a 3/5.

As a budding fan of Jennifer Garner, I was hoping for a solid film where she could engage us, as the girl next door, caught up in a love dramedy. After viewing the film,it's clear she, as well as the other actors did what they could to convey the plight and life situation of these characters. The film never rally takes off-it hovers on the edge of comedy, drama and self-discovery, but to me, just seemed to be a half-hearted attempt to elicit sympathy and empathy, from the audience.

I love romantic comedies, but this one seems like a series of vignettes-never really arriving. The end seems oddly compensatory, and we never really feel as though Jennifer Garner's character finds herself or stands on her own. I was sorely disappointed, that the setting itself was the best character in the film.

****Spoiler Alert***

The story arc feels very "catch and release"-the story has its moments, like when Jennifer Garner's character realizes that her fiance has been cheating on her, and the part where she is told that her fiance's friend is in love with her. But no storyline is actually pursued. Things are said and done, but the pieces feel slightly "off". The film has no beginning, middle and end-it just kind of drifts. Jennifer's character does not seem realistic, to me, in that she accepts her fiance's mistress into her house without much of a hiccup, and no one actually grieves for the loss of their friend, except for a few brief crying scenes, which feel obligatory.