Grade: B-

Verdict: Steven Spielberg's con-man caper could stand to be a little swifter on its feet.

Details: Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, Christopher Walken. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Rated PG-13 (some sexual content and language). Two hours, 20 minutes.

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DVD note:
The two-disc DVD includes a couple of must-catch extras, including a discussion of Williams' score (he had studied jazz in the late '50s and early '60s, and his resulting score shows he was re-energized) and firsthand reminisces from Frank Abagnale Jr., the real-life con artist DiCaprio plays.

Review: "Catch Me If You Can" is a hummingbird trapped in an elephant's body, a great 90-minute movie swollen to epic size. An alternate title might be "Cut Me If You Can." But no one, it seems, can tell Steven Spielberg that some movies are better lean.

But if this fact-based tale of a wunderkind swindler suffers from the director's gigantism, it's still lighter on its feet than anything he's made since "Jurassic Park." Like that movie, this one has lots of running around. Only here, our hero, Frank Abagnale Jr. (Leonardo DiCaprio), isn't escaping velociraptors, but a buttoned-down dinosaur of an FBI agent named Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks).

When we meet Frank in 1964, he's a bright-eyed 16-year-old living in suburban New York, idolizing his businessman dad (Christopher Walken) and lovely French mother (Nathalie Baye). In 1969 he's a filthy wreck barely able to stagger out of his tiny French prison cell when Hanratty arrives to extradite him home.

Those five years in-between make up the bulk of “Catch Me” — the pre-groovy '60s era, reflected in John Williams' Mancini-influenced score and an animated, “Pink Panther”-style credits sequence. (Janusz Kaminski's sometimes hazy cinematography doesn't always jell with the film's rascally tone.)

When Frank begins his life of crime, men still wear hats, the chatter of typewriters fill the air, and Sean Connery's 007 is shaking his first martinis onscreen. Flying is sexy, not a chore: Airline pilots are treated like gods by awed kids, and by stewardesses happy to peel off their “Jetsons”-style uniforms for some coffee-tea-or-me layovers.

Frank dons a Pan Am cap and launches a career of forgery, false impersonation and fun with stewardesses. Masquerading as a co-pilot and flying free all over the globe, he branches out, posing as a physician and attorney. And getting paid for it.

It's all true. Well, mostly. “Catch Me” takes liberties with some details, but the wilder schemes are for real. (That includes passing himself off as a pediatrician in an Atlanta-area hospital.)

So what made Frank a scammer? The thrill of getting away with it — and getting girls — seems reward enough for a smart teenager, but Jeff Nathanson's script saddles Frank with a Motivation (yeah, the capital-M kind that they teach you about in screenplay seminars). Here's where the movie stubs its toe.

See, Frank wants to prove himself to Frank Sr., who's presented as a borderline con artist himself. Thus we have an easy psychological foundation, even if it's false. (In a new afterword to his memoir, the real Abagnale politely refutes the onscreen depiction of his father.) The movie also conveniently omits one of Frank's first scams: He ran up a $3,400 charge on dear ol' dad's Mobil card, hardly the mark of a loving son.

The script fabricates a second, symbolic father-son relationship between con artist and his would-be captor. The movie's best scenes are two close calls when Hanratty almost nabs Frank. The first, in a hotel room, showcases the kid's knack at talking his way out of the very worst situation. The second involves Miami Airport and eight flight attendants in an exhilarating ruse. It's a great place to end the movie. Too bad the thing rambles on a lot longer.

“Catch Me” includes a sexy cameo by Jennifer Garner as a pricey “model,” and features Amy Adams as sweet, slightly pathetic Brenda, the girl most likely to make Frank mend his ways. Martin Sheen turns up as a New Orleans attorney. But it's Walken who makes the strongest impression in the supporting cast, playing a Willy Loman figure who has to shore himself up with memories from the past.

Hanks, working a Boston accent, squeezes every bit of humor he can from his obsessed character, and DiCaprio is in fine, exuberant form. They're good enough to carry you over the movie's dimestore psychologizing.

But hey, Frank Abagnale made a career of fudging the truth. So does Hollywood. As far as rides go, “Catch Me” may not be first-class, and its destination is one we've been to before. It's a Spielberg flick, so you know we'll travel from lively chaos to a fadeout that finds the hero back in the safe embrace of family (or a surrogate family, anyway). At least getting there is, for the most part, fun.

— Steve Murray, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution