You'll cheer, you'll cry, you'll laugh, the Catch and Release movie trailer boldly promises. At least they got the last one right.

I had low expectations going in to Catch and Release. It wasn't encouraging that the release date for the movie had been pushed back six months -- usually that means the studio is trying to unload it at a time with the least competition.

However, it was boasting genuinely solid actress Jennifer Garner (Alias), Kevin Smith (Clerks) and the writer of Erin Brockovich, so it had potential to rise above the curse of mid-January releases.

The movie is funny, thanks mostly to Smith, but it doesn't completely come together.

Garner plays Gray, a woman who tragically loses her fiancée shortly before their wedding. She is forced to move in with his two best friends, played by Smith and Sam Jaeger (Lucky Number Slevin), when she can no longer afford her rent.

Enter Fritz, played by Timothy Olyphant (The Girl Next Door), the fiancée's friend from LA. We're introduced to him as a sleazy, selfish jerk. And he plays it so convincingly it's hard to warm up to him later in the movie when we're supposed to be rooting for him.

Secrets begin to be revealed about Garner's fiancée -- a million-dollar account, a free-spirited mistress and a child -- which ruin Garner's picture-perfect image of him.

Through it all, the characters deal with their grief, fall in love and realize people aren't always what they seem.

First-time director Susannah Grant should stick to writing, for which she has an Oscar nomination.

The directing was unbearably slow at parts and then choppy at others. She bounces around from scene to scene with very little continuity so that all sense of time is lost.

However, Grant's sense of dark humor and interesting concepts slightly redeem the movie, even when her characters are unlikable or fall into stereotypes.

Olyphant, who is forced into the role of Garner's new love interest, doesn't ever come across as charmingly noble, even though they want us very badly to believe it.

And it's not only unrealistic that they fall in love so quickly after Garner's six-year relationship ends so tragically, it's also tawdry.

We never see the relationship as anything more than a rebound for Garner until the very end, when it's too late to capture the audience's support.

Garner is tolerable but lacks the grace and charm she's brought to other roles such as 13 Going on 30.

However, the reason to see this movie is Kevin Smith, known most notably for his Silent Bob character.

He plays himself -- adlibbing most of his lines and bringing comic relief to a movie that could have easily slipped into melodrama otherwise.

Catch and Release, stylistically and conceptually, seems caught between an indie-downer and a romantic comedy. The result is that it doesn't succeed as either.

See it on DVD, especially if you're a Garner fan.

Grade C+