CATCH ME IF YOU CAN (Steven Spielberg, 2002)

Reviewed: January 3rd, 2002

Had to return to this advertisement for obesity a second time after falling asleep during the first go round; what I was initially willing to blow off as mediocre has been downgraded to obnoxiously poor. I assume the title's ironic, considering what should of been a crackerjack, cat-and-mouse yarn is actually 2 hours and 20 minutes of hollow fluff that moves with the speed of a narcoleptic on downers. There's never any suspense partially because the screenplay is inexplicably structured to reveal the ending (which it will then periodically flash back to) right off the bat and partially because there's essentially no conflict either, just careful cinematography trying to hide the utter emptiness. If DiCaprio as real-life, teenage con man Frank Abagnale Jr. needs a piece of information he instantly lucks into obtaining it (literally sometimes by accident, which is pretty much exactly how Hanks's FBI man ever catches a break in the case), if he needs some more cash he forges another check, if he needs a special check re-router coding machine he goes to an auction and buys one, if he needs to escape a hoard of FBI men he flies to a college and tricks a bevy of beautiful girls into shielding him, if he needs a pilot's outfit he goes to a warehouse and picks one up, if he needs to pass a bar exam after never training a day in his life as a lawyer, he simply studies hard for two weeks. Abagnale, according to Catch Me If You Can, is suave and handsome and smart, yes, but the film also soon reveals him as a fundamentally uninteresting guy (do you wanna see a movie about the kid in high school who played five sports, was prom king, scored a 1600 on his SATs and made his mom breakfast in bed each morning?). His whole motivation seems to be parental approval (or disapproval as the case later becomes), but his love for his father (Christopher Walken) is played about as earnestly and thus unrealistically as an episode of Leave it to Beaver. We might ever get a real sense of Abagnale's essential loneliness if not for the fact Spielberg gives him a girl every few scenes (what freakin' purpose does the fifteen minute Jennifer Garner interlude serve! ever heard of editing!) before placing him down for near-good with this bubblegum nothing of a teenybopper (that's the point, see: she's young and pure and so is Frank) in the second most uninvolved courtship of the year (right after DiCaprio's "relationship" with Diaz in Gangs of New Year). There's only two truly charged scenes: when Abagnale abruptly becomes his class' substitute and the first time he audaciously escapes Hanks; otherwise, the fun (He forges checks! Now he gets to fly around for free! Now he's a doctor! Now he's a lawyer! And He Learned It All From The Movies And Television!) quickly wares off. Wanna know the reason they didn't make a movie revolving around the FBI's check fraud department sooner? Because it's a tedious field. None of this matters, though. Look up "critic-proof" in the dictionary and you'll find a production still from Catch Me. Spend it wisely, Stevie.

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