Catfish and Catch Me if You Can
Catfish is a documentary following a young photographer who begins an online relationship with a middle aged woman in Michigan after receiving a painting from her 8 year old daughter. Yaniv is led to believe he is in a relationship with her older sister, is receiving paintings from her regularly, and speaks with the three of them over the phone and through Facebook. Then we all find out he has been played the whole time and it was actually just another bored twisted woman trying to fill some void in her life by gaining the attention of a gullible young man who wouldn’t know better. Catch Me If You Can is a crime/drama/biography about a kid who becomes one of the best forgers of all time fooling airlines, hospitals, banks and beautiful women.
Frank Jr. in is similar to Angela in the way that they are both conning people constantly. At least Frank has something real to gain from it unlike Angela who will only be remembered as some crazy old lady. Frank used charm, wits, and a lot of effort to pull off the things he did. Making fake checks and running a doctor’s office takes some real intelligence and some big balls if you ask me. Creating fake identities on the internet and using them to toy with people’s minds takes nothing more than someone with no life and a computer. Catch Me If You Can is one of my favorite movies and every time I watch it I notice new things and can’t help but chuckle at Tom Hanks as a grouchy Detective. You couldn’t pay me to watch Catfish again the people in it were uninteresting and the plot was weak. These movies don’t compare in quality, only the lies compare.
I agree with you about Catfish having no real repeated viewing qualities, and that even after watching Catch Me if You Can once more for maybe the dozenth time or so was still very enjoyable and brought notice to even more aspects of the film. I just enjoy the animated opening credit intro so much more now on the big screen. I think that for Angela in Catfish, even though the relationship was based on lies and could never materialize into a physical meeting that would play out well under those circumstances she was gaining for her something real, that was lacking in her everyday life. And that Frank Abignale Jr. in Catch Me if you can, even though he was conning his way into a fortune his life was lacking the real things that he wanted, which was for his family to get back together and to have a real relationship with another person not based on so many lies.
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