Location, location, flirtation, deflation

Reviewed - Catch and Release:  WE have, over the past year, seen a spate of films following various groups of beautiful people as they rattle lubriciously against one another in some photogenic part of the United States.

Like The Last Kiss and Trust the Man, Catch and Release is an aimless, unfocused affair, but, unlike those gruesome pictures, it has an irresistible warmth and features characters with whom you might actually like to spend time.

Unburdened with anything you'd call a plot, hostile to the notion of an unexpected reversal, Susannah Grant's debut as director - she wrote Charlotte's Web and Erin Brockovich - is one of those pretty films in which you can contentedly wrap yourself while thinking of less than nothing.

Much of the credit for the picture's modest success should be directed towards the compelling female lead. Looking like a grim, weather-beaten statue of herself, Jennifer Garner plays a young woman whose fiance has been killed in a boating accident mere days before the couple are to be married. In the weeks that follow, she uncovers some unhappy intelligence about the dead man. Not only has he sired a child by a Californian massage therapist, but that irresponsible hippie looks and sounds exactly like the terrifying catastrophe that is Juliette Lewis.

As Jennifer circles her sometime rival, she rubs up against Timothy Olyphant's wry lothario - one of the few people who knew about the Lewis business - and the two begin a somewhat uncomfortable dalliance.

Early on it is clear where the story, such as it is, will take us, but the events happen in such nice places and to such charming people that Catch and Release never seems like a chore. Kevin Smith and Sam Jaeger are winning as Garner's flatmates, and the Colorado countryside is tastefully shot by John Lindley.

The only truly jarring note comes from poor old Fiona Shaw. Yet again, the Cork woman is cast as a character who - at first anyway - behaves as if she eats babies for breakfast and kittens for supper. Can't some film-maker find a sensible lady for Fiona to play?