Review

Review Date: 29-December-02
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Just OK

Catch Me If You Can (2002)

It's clear why Steven Spielberg wanted to release "Catch Me If You Can" on Christmas Day: like rival film "Antwone Fisher," it tells a true-life story with a message of redemption about a young man emerging from a difficult childhood. (Also, it has a recurring Christmas theme.) Unlike "Antwone Fisher," however, this picture is a light drama/comedy that only occasionally dips into serious matters and maintains its historical setting for added flavor. It could have been a frothy period lark — the kind of thing that makes you think, "They must have had such fun making this!" — but with Spielberg's meticulous, entirely calculated style and a lack of fully realized characters, it ends up being quite a bore.

Leonardo Di Caprio stars as Frank Abagnale, Jr., who became the youngest person to make the FBI's Most Wanted List by committing a series of forgeries in the mid 1960s. Abagnale ran away from home at 16 and, over the next few years, managed to impersonate an airline pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer in cities and towns across the US, cashing phony checks worth millions along the way. Trailing him was FBI agent Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks), who had a rather friendly cat-and-mouse relationship with the young felon and ended up arresting him in France. The movie itself, however, has more than just a friendly relationship with Abagnale; from the very first scene it announces him as a lovable rogue we ought to root for (Di Caprio's forté) and spends a lot of time making excuses for his behavior. We see young Frank's happy home torn apart when his kind but shady father (Christopher Walken) loses their house and his beautiful wife, forcing Frank to choose which parent to live with in the wake of a divorce. Thereafter, Frank is a man-child looking for someone to love him with honesty, a yearning which is highlighted by his odd relationship with Hanratty and some of his amorous adventures (including a strange run-in with venal vamp Jennifer Garner and an engagement to the daughter of a prominent Southern attorney).

"Catch Me If You Can" is quite long, but doesn't contain enough to satisfy. With any true-life story, even one so interesting as this, a filmmaker needs to find a narrative focus, even at the expense of verity — history is one thing and entertainment another. Abagnale's story could have made a good film if it were presented as either a hoot ("Look at this cute, natty 1960s kid and all the stuff he got away with!") or a personal drama propelled by Hanratty's pursuit and the mutual needs that drove both him and Abagnale. As it stands, the film tries to be both and ends up being neither. Its one saving grace is the fine work of the cast: Di Caprio is solid on familiar ground; Walken delivers a marvelously nuanced performance; and Hanks, in a thin supporting role, shows exactly why he is one of the finest actors of our age — he magically forges something out of almost nothing. But considering that my theater chain, for one, has taken advantage of the holidays (and the arrival of "The Two Towers") to increase its prices once again, I say this is one movie you don't need to catch.

Copyright © 2002 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.