Austin Film Festival

Sure it's better to have loved and lost than not at all, but what about loving, losing, then discovering your now-dead groom-to-be wasn't at all who you thought he was?

That's still not as bad as the not-at-all option, it turns out, so long as that deceased fiance left you with some true-blue pals to cushion the fall. So says "Catch and Release," a likable romantic comedy that delivers enough laughs and star appeal to fare reasonably well in the date-movie department, even if it doesn't entirely live up to its ambitions.

Jennifer Garner plays would-be bride Gray, whose caterers plan for a wedding but wind up feeding a collection of mourners -- including two, her late fiance Grady's housemates, who are close enough to be her brothers, and one, a shallow commercials director just in from L.A. (Timothy Olyphant), who never quite fit into this little clan but has decided to stick around a while nevertheless.

In tidying up Grady's affairs, Gray makes some startling discoveries: He was rich and was sending someone $3,000 a month. That someone is an unmarried woman (Juliette Lewis) with a young son.

Some hurtful words and one halfhearted suicide attempt later, these developments prove a bit less disruptive than viewers might expect. The story takes place in sunny Boulder, Colo., where, one character notes, people are unnaturally happy. Indeed a strong undercurrent of peace, love and understanding runs through the film: Characters introduced as louts or floozies are soon shown to be sympathetic human beings. Even their natural enemies come to see the good in them.

In part, that appears to reflect the big-heartedness of screenwriter Susannah Grant (champion of underestimated women in "Erin Brockovich" and "In Her Shoes"), who is making her feature-directing debut. She's sympathetic here to characters that in another film might be two-dimensional punching bags; her warmth and her eagerness to make something richer than a typical romantic comedy go a long way.

But those revelations of characters' hidden depths also can be abrupt, particularly in the case of Olyphant's womanizer, whose evolution into a decent guy seems to happen off camera. Grant has acknowledged that her cut of the film started at two hours and 57 minutes. While one doesn't long for that extra hour's reinstatement -- this sweet, small story isn't meant to be an epic, and already feels a bit long -- these cuts would explain a thing or two.

If not all its narrative and emotional strands work perfectly, though, the movie has its charms. Kevin Smith, as Grady's housemate Sam, proves he's no one-note Silent Bob. Although wearing a tie-dyed shirt may be the biggest challenge he faces here, he fills his comic-relief duties easily and has time left over to show a little tenderness. While Smith gets most of the laughs, Garner does turn a dinner-table outburst into a comic highlight.

CATCH AND RELEASE
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures/Tall Trees Prods.
Credits:
Screenwriter-director: Susannah Grant
Producer: Jenno Topping
Executive producers: Casey Grant, Matthew Tolmach
Director of photography: John Lindley
Production designer: Brent Thomas
Costumes: Tish Monaghan
Music: BT
Editor: Anne V. Coates
Cast:
Gray: Jennifer Garner
Fritz: Timothy Olyphant
Maureen: Juliette Lewis
Sam: Kevin Smith
Dennis: Sam Jaeger
Mattie: Joshua Friesen
Mrs. Douglas: Fiona Shaw
Running time -- 115 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13