`CATCH AND RELEASE' LACKS A CERTAIN LURE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

Susannah Grant has written a number of above-average chick flicks:

``Erin Brockovich,'' ``In Her Shoes,'' ``Ever After.''

But Grant's scriptwriting skills let her down for her directing debut, ``Catch and Release.''

It's one of those romantic things that addresses serious issues but wants us to laugh, too. From scene to scene, it careens back and forth between honest emotion and contrived absurdity, the net effect of which is to make even the most credible bits of behavior feel suspect and the whole package annoyingly unengaging.

Things start out on the wrong foot -- and never regain balance -- with our heroine, Jennifer Garner's Gray Wheeler, reciting a voice-over inner monologue while trying to get through her fiance Grady's wake.

Such things are usually hard to pull off, but this one may have worked if what we hear wasn't as vulgar and glib as a ``Sex and the City'' narration. This woman just lost the love of her young life in a stupid skiing accident, and it sounds like she's auditioning for a premium cable sitcom.

Anyway, for some financial reason, Gray must move in with her dead intended's Boulder, Colo., roommates, guilt-wracked stoner Sam (played amusingly enough by Garner/Affleck family pal Kevin Smith, who directed Ben in ``Chasing Amy,'' ``Dogma'' and such) and Dennis (Sam Jaeger), who is secretly in love with her. Crashing on the couch is Grady's Hollywood pal Fritz (``Deadwood's'' Timothy Olyphant), to whom Gray took an immediate dislike when she caught him having sex with a caterer at the wake but, y'know, is awfully cute regardless of that.

Anyway, the four housemates all try to cope with their grief in different, mildly wacky ways and take stock of their lives, which seem to have unnaturally strong connections to the Celestial Seasonings tea corporation (that outfit surely sets a record here for product placements from an ``alternative business'' in a Hollywood movie). Gray's gradual discovery that Grady may not have been the faithful paragon she imagined gives her more reasons to dislike Fritz, who, regardless of that, stubbornly remains awfully cute.

It's hard to say if Garner's performance is any good or not. She seems to handle comic confusion brightly, but her character's behavior is so hard to fathom that no amount of skill can really make her come alive. But at least Gray's not predictable. Poor Juliette Lewis is typecast as a flaky California single mom who cooks vegan and actually talks about auras and stuff.

As for Grant's directing abilities, well, um, let's see ... She does put together a lovemaking scene in double and triple exposures that takes the ``art'' of not really showing anything to a new level.

The only other backhanded thing you can say about that is it's consistent with the thematic tone of ``Catch and Release,'' which would like to be all about accepting life's realities, recovering from loss and learning to love again, but really has nothing to say that rings the least bit true about such matters.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

[e-mail]

CATCH AND RELEASE - Two stars

(PG-13: sex, language, drug use)

Starring: Jennifer Garner, Timothy Olyphant, Kevin Smith, Sam Jaeger, Juliette Lewis.

Director: Susannah Grant.

Running time: 1 hr. 51 min.

Playing: In wide release.

In a nutshell: Woman's fiance dies, she moves in with his buddies, nobody acts in recognizably human ways.

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

A bad beginning turns into something more for Fritz (Timothy Olyphant) and Gray (Jennifer Garner) in ``Catch and Release.''