So I just saw catch me if you can. And I hope that this time I may be the first to post. It was fantabulous. I really didnt expect too much, since Leo really hasnt done anything to impress me much, and although I respect Speilberg as a director, his stuff always seems a bit over the top for me, whis is by no means bad.
Back to the subject though, I must say that it was very well thought out, and very well executed. From the little details of DiCaprio’s character
[spoiler] The way he collects the labels, from his dad’s recognition in the rotary club to the point when he first comes in contact with Tom Hanks’s character. Its just one of the little ideosycnhosies that really make it a believable charachter.
Beyond minor things like that, he really pulls it off as a con man. You can see the anguish he feels as his parents divorce, you can see the excitement as you realize that almost his entire charade is to get them back together.
And the just general growth of the charachter. From a kid pretending to be a substitute teacher for kicks and acceptance, to the tortured soul that gets captured in a french printing shop- its just amazing how believable he makes it, at least to me. [/spoiler]
As for Hanks, he does a very good job as the almost paternalistic “cat” in the chase. The only major flaw was his accent. At some points it was excellent, but at others… I had to cringe.
Some reviews ive read say that it focuses too much on the exploits and not enough on the charachter. Surprisingly enough, Id say that the characters shine through more on the screen than they would on paper.
I know ill think of more when i get some sleep (its almost 3am here) but other than that, I highly recommend seeing it.
-PSM
I probably won’t see the movie because I was so impressed by the book. I can’t see being more than vaguely satisfied by the film, even though it is a Tom Hanks/Steven Spielberg collaboration.
I admit, though, I am curious how they portray some of the events in his story. Such as
how he conned the would-be stewardess coeds to Europe, and his stint as a doctor. Those cons took finesse and balls. I doubt they show all the roles he played (co-pilot, doctor, lawyer, and professor) but I do want to see if they made his cons believable. I’m also curious if they sanitized his stay in the French prison-- it was a pretty brutal place.
Aw, hell. Who’m I kidding? I’ll probably see it.
That the story seems to be events-driven rather than character-driven is a disappointment, but not an unexpected one. It takes time to develop a character properly, and seeing as there’s no way you could squeeze in character development and his fantastic exploits into a movie and keep it under 4 hours, I guess I’d rather see compromises on former instead of the latter. Still, I’d hate for DiCaprio’s character to come across as just another scummy con artist. He wasn’t the most shining example of a human being, but it’d be wrong to say he was completely without morals.
I agree that the characters shine through, and I have read the book. While some things had to be changed and/or left out, in no way was this merely an event-driven story.
I also agree about Hanks’ now you hear it, now you don’t accent.
But I enjoyed him.
Let me preface this by saying I am no huge Leonardo fan:
I found DiCaprio to be chameleon-like in his ability to perform both as Abegnale the con artist as well as Abegnale the anguished son.
Catch Me If You Can is good, good stuff; not an epic such as Two Towers, but a quiet cat-and-mouse-father/son masterpiece underscored with most excellent 60’s production values, and a fittingly jumpy John Williams musical accompaniment.
I was surprised by this movie, I must admit. I didn’t come into it expecting much, but I walked out thinking it was definitely worth the money. Spielberg lined up a great supporting cast–for the first time in my life, I didn’t automatically think of Christopher Walken as creepy.
It also really made me want to read the book–it’s an amazing story.
Well, those events are the major story events, so I’m not surprised they were in the movie. Stilll, based on this and the other thread on CMIYC, it does appear to follow the book nicely. It may lose me on some specific details, such as
how Frank procured the Pan Am logos for his phony checks, the Pan Am uniform, pilot’s license, and FAA ID
and the overall smoothness in which he executed his cons, but otherwise, I’m actually starting to think I’ll see this one. One can’t do too badly with Hanks and Spielberg, right?
I was dissappointed in the changes from book to film. To me the biggest changes would be…
The change the basic reason he commites these crimes. In the book he is clear that he started writing bogus checks to get girls. The film over and over makes it some sort of revenge/desperate try to get his parents back together. In the book his mother did not leave the dad because his business failed. Also In The Book dad was not a con artist himself. Also ITB Frank only accidentally works as a doctor and a lawyer. He was really worried about being a doctor. He definetly did not go to a hospitable and apply for a job. Plus the end of the film is so made up out of whole cloth that it does not even resemble the book. The film also makes a fool out of the Tom Hanks character and leaves out some of Franks best escapes.
I enjoyed the film but I do wish I read the book later.
It’s interesting to hear others criticize Hanks, because I thought his accent kind of sucked, and I mentioned it to a couple people, and they acted like I was nuts. I liked the movie, especially the attention to detail in all the sets. Visually, it was very enjoyable. I have one nitpick:
What was the point of repeatedly flashing forward in time to DiCaprio and Hanks on the plane coming back from France? I just found it distracting. It was like: Yeah, we GET it - he’s gonna get caught. It was already established that he was going to get caught at the beginning of the movie, so why did they keep going out of the time line like that? Didn’t seem to be any point to it.
Last week, USA Today ran an article which talked about the differences between the book, the film, and what may or may not have actually happened. It’s a fun article, and, like most of USA Today’s fare, pretty brief.
i thot that the movie was GREAT! i am embarrassed to say it, but i now like LEO. true confession time is over. i thot that hanks was pretty good, but the fake bobby kennedy accent irked me tremendously. i think that it stinks almost as badly as dan aykroyd’s in driving miss daisy.
question, tho. didn’t the dad retire from the airlines? how come he was having such a rough go of it? or was it some other occupation? i forgot.
Liked it. Good story, well-told, with some funny moments and some great acting. Because I’m a huge comic book geek, my favorite bit was
when Carl catches up to Frank and he identifies himself as “Barry Allen, Secret Service.” I laughed pretty hard, but nobody else in the theater seemed to get it. If Carl had been a comic book fan, the movie would have been over right there. Heck, I was almost waiting for Frank to impersonate a police chemist…
I thought it was really a pretty good movie. The opening credits had to be the slickest I have ever seen. I thought they were as interesting as watching most movies nowadays.
I did have one continuity question though. The movie shows Leo interviewing the guy from Pan Am. You get the feeling that he is doing it to learn how to impersonate a pilot. Well cut to about an hour later and he is interviewing the same guy. The Pan Am guy wants to cut the interview short because he is worried about the mystery flyer that is impersonating a pilot. So does this mean that Leo is interviewing the same guy a second time (why?), or that he has already been impersonating a pilot before he interviews that guy? Either way presents some continuity problems IMO.
I enjoyed it, but not as much as I was hoping to. I thought the whole Let’s-Try-To-Reunite-Mum-And-Dad was mawkish and cornball, not at all the sort of thing I want to see in a movie.
But the acting was superb on all parts, and I really enjoyed it for that. And the cons were lots of fun.
If you enjoyed this movie, I recommend you look for Nine Queens, an Argentinian con artist movie that (imo) blows this one out of the water. The less you know about Nine Queens before you see it, the better – it’s a wonderful movie.