Catch and Release (2007)

Blu-ray

When Grey (Jennifer Garner) loses her fiance Grady just as they are about to get married, things get bad for our star pretty quick in Catch and Release. Needing a place to live so she can get her life together (she would have lived in a home with Grady), Grey ends up moving in with her best friends Sam (Kevin Smith) and Dennis (Sam Jaeger). During this time of transition she starts talking to Grady's best pal Fritz (Timothy Olyphant) and soon realizes through a series of events that made Grady wasn't the man she thought he was. You can pretty much guess what happens in the rest of this movie and by process of elimination figure out how Grey's life goes.

Okay, if the pretentious names and "seen it before" plot haven't yet deterred your desire to see this movie, than Catch and Release is probably going to sit well with you. For me, there were too many movie moments and too many forced sounding conversations from a cast that seems like they should know better.

Commentary Tracks
This DVD has two commentary tracks. One is with Director/Writer Susannah Grant and Kevin Smith, and the other is with Susannah Grant and Cinematographer John Lindley. Okay, I am 33 years old, which one do you think I listened to? Kevin Smith makes this commentary for probably the same reason he was hired to do this film. He and Grant banter wittily back and forth about each scene, praising certain actor's performances and discussing what was going on on set the day a particular scene was shot. They discuss the script and basically a lot of this track features Smith asking Grant a lot of questions, to which she usually laughs before she responds.

Deleted Scenes

Making of Featurette and Cast Auditions
The Making of Featurette and Cast Auditions were similar in that they dealt with how this movie came together, so I decided to put them both together here. The Making of Featurette is pretty predictable stuff with the actors, the director and others talking about this film, their characters and the themes of the story. There's nothing too amazing about this but it's worth a glance if you're a big fan of this movie. The Cast Auditions feature Kevin Smith, Juliette Lewis and Sam Jaeger and if you watch none of the other supplemental features on this release, make sure to run this one through your Blu-ray player.

I guess I probably should have known that anything from the screenwriter of 28 Days and In Her Shoes would probably not sit well with me. However, since screenwriter Susannah Grant also served as director on this project, it makes sense that she would insulate herself with somewhat familiar material her first time out. Yet, I just can't help but wonder how the writer of Erin Brockovich could play it so safe here? This is literally one of those movies that you could watch the trailer of and instantly know what it was all about.

Obviously, Susannah Grant has talent and she'll most certainly make another movie. It is also clear that for the majority of this cast, their roles in this film represented a nice payday. I just wish that this whole learning process didn't seem so obvious.