A Review: CATCH ME IF YOU CAN
Salon has already done a fine review of the movie, so I'll just confine myself, for which you should be grateful, to a personal opinion.
Catch Me If You Can is a pleasant piece of fluff. One is able to leave the theatre in a neutral state of mind. Not enraged, not saddened, not thrilled. But aware that for 2 l/2 hours you have done nothing to harm your psyche. It is a pat on the head from daddy.
Some of you already know how I feel about Steven Spielberg. I call him our paterfamilias because he is the typical Old World father who sits at the head of the table, watches table manners, and doles out reproaches and praise in equal measure.
I was so happy that Mr. Spielberg found it in his heart to make us a movie not drenched in blood and dripping with tragedy. I don't want to leave a matinee, go home and make dinner and, as I mash the potatoes, think about starving, tortured, dying people. Perhaps you think I don't care? I care so much that I don't need Mr. Spielberg heaping it on me with surround screen and Dolby Sound.
Oh, yes, the movie. You already know the plot. It's about Frank Abagnale's excellent adventure in check fraud. Great Acting: Leonardo DiCaprio is perfect as the downy-cheeked lad who bilks banks. Christopher Walken, Frank's father, is rheumy-eyed, and heart-breakingly good in the role of a disappointed, but resigned non-entity. At first I didn't recognize Tom Hanks in his sincere FBI suit and glasses. I think he could have played it a little less straight. Martin Sheen is in it and I don't know why. Anyone could have been father of the bride. This is not Mr. Sheen's kind of work.
Lacking peaks and valleys, this seamless movie is, I think, interesting, because one knows, going in, that it's about the early life of a real con artist.
9:20:36 AM 
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