Music Movie Mondays: Catch and Release

 

One Sentence Review: A better-than-it-should-be movie with a rocking soundtrack.

Full Review: I have a deep, dark secret to admit: I love the movie Catch and Release. A movie snob to the core, normally, I would laugh it off as garbage and pretend I hated it, while secretly watching the DVD several times on the sly, but I can't this time. You need to see this movie. Most critical reviews I have read on the movie give it extremely negative reviews (we're talking 1's out of 5's and C-'s). Don't believe them.

Rewind. You're thinking, what does this have to do with music? Catch and Release has an awesome soundtrack, which I will get to momentarily. 

The movie itself centers around a woman whose fiance dies a few days before her wedding. As she tries to figure out life without him, she begins to find out secrets from his past. After moving in with a couple of his buddies and the return of his old high school friend, things get intense all around, and that's about as far as I'm going to take it with the synopsis, but it involves secret money, a kid, and unexpected love interests. It's not a romantic comedy, but it's not a drama. It lies in the space between the two and does so quite well.

Jennifer Garner is likable as per usual. Timothy Olyphant, her fiance's old high school buddy who comes home from LA, is ridiculously attractive and charming. He's a solid actor that does well even in mediocre flicks. Kevin Smith is actually funny. Don't send me angry notes about how great he is. What's so funny about Kevin Smith aside from original Silent Bob stuff? Not great. Maybe his Emmy (or Gemini since we are talking Canadian show, eh?) worthy performance in Degrassi? Probably not.

So, back to the music. 

The soundtrack is loaded with laid back jams from Joshua Radin and Gary Jules. It also has rocking tracks from Gomez and Deathcab for Cutie. It is a soundtrack worth buying, if you don't already own half the tunes. I love the Radin song that I featured in the live video clip earlier today and the Gomez tune "These 3 Sins" that plays on the way to a day of chilling by the river. Awesome picks all around.

Great soundtrack and surprisingly good movie. Check em both out. It's worth your time, even if you have to lie about it afterward.

You Could Fast Forward Through: I don't love the weird semi-relationship that happens between Smith and Juliet Lewis (especially a creepy moment that you can figure out when you see it) or her extremely annoying kid that I would give extreme eye rolls (they mean biz) to if I saw them out in public and he behaves like he does for 90% of his scenes. Also, the ending should be better than it is. It's pretty cliche, which is sad, because you get the idea that the movie never catches on that it could be great.

You Have To Watch: A smoking hot kiss between Garner and Olyphant. I wasn't going to spoil it for you, but if you don't get where the movie is headed about twenty minutes in, you should question your reasoning skills. It's so awesome that I have found the clip and provide it for you. Hot. Hot. Hot. 

 

 

 

Also, the cinematography is beautiful. It's so nice that you'll probably look up costs to travel to Colorado as soon as the movie is over. 

 

Fun Fact: Jason Lee was originally offered the role that eventually went to Kevin Smith and even though I love Jason Lee, I gotta say, Smith owned this role. Props to him. Dude's had a rough week. 

 Take a stroll on over to Amazon and check out the soundtrack.