YMMV / Catch Me If You Can

• Award Snub:
  • While the movie was a box office hit and a critical favorite, it didn't rack up a lot of Academy Award nominations. Partly because it was viewed as a low-key work for Steven Spielberg who by that time was making one epic movie after another. His other 2002 film, Minority Report, was similarly snubbed despite universal acclaim and box office success.
  • Fans of Leonardo DiCaprio will point to this as one of his more joyous performances, and will say that this would have made for a great nomination.
• Awesome Art: The opening credits set the stage for the rest of the movie. We see minimal animated characters playing out the film, with a cop in a trench coat chasing a figure that keeps changing outfits.
• Awesome Music: We're used to John Williams creating bombastic, thrilling orchestral music. Here, he goes with a jazzy, Henry Mancini inspired score and makes it work. He actually started out doing this kind of music; just check out Daddy-O or listen to Mancini's Peter Gunn theme (that's Williams on the famous piano riff).
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Christopher Walken pretty much steals the whole film with his performance as Frank's dad. A well-earned Oscar nomination.
• Magnificent Bastard: Frank Abagnale Jr. is a born Con Man whose first relatively harmless scheme involved impersonating his French teacher, fooling the entire school for at least a week. His later criminal actions consist of acquiring millions of dollars by writing fraudulent checks, sending out fake letters, and posing as air plane pilots, doctors, and lawyers, all to live a lavish lifestyle spent in expensive hotels, throwing parties, and sleeping with numerous women he seduces, as well as a high-class prostitute whom he tricks into paying him for the night spent with her. When the FBI's Financial Crimes unit starts pursuing him, Frank cleverly manages to avoid capture numerous times, such as performing a Bavarian Fire Drill that convinces FBI Agent Carl Hanratty that Frank is a Secret Service agent, and in his most audacious scheme, smuggling himself through an airport filled with FBI agents by recruiting a group of good-looking stewardesses to distract the men supposed to be watching out for him. Although the law ultimately catches up with him, Frank is a Lovable Rogue who is so good at what he does that he's able to elude the authorities for years and all before he was even 21.
• Nausea Fuel: In-universe and real life, Frank sees the broken leg of a boy (he broke it in a bike accident) in the ER. It's covered in blood, and it looks like the bone is visible through the break. Frank is visibly unnerved, and abruptly leaves the ER to vomit in a sink in the janitor's closet.
• One-Scene Wonder: Jennifer Garner as a call-girl who plays a sexy game of Go Fish and then gets duped into trading cash for one of Frank's bad checks. For anyone not already watching Alias at the time, this scene made them sit up and say "Who is that?"
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Amy Adams as Frank's fianceé. As mentioned on the trivia page, Spielberg was rather upset when this didn't end up being a Star-Making Role for her.
  • Elizabeth Banks also has a small role in the film, well before she became a household name.
  • A pre-Grey's Anatomy Ellen Pompeo as a flight attendant.
• Ron the Death Eater: A bit of dislike is aimed towards Brenda for cooperating with the FBI in helping to catch Frank. Except she found out that the man she loves is really a "boy" and a con artist that lied to her about everything, including that he was a Lutheran, and he ran out of their engagement party, leaving her family to deal with the cops. Yes, Frank was upset, but Brenda would have been committing obstruction of justice otherwise, and she had no reason to trust her fianceé.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Brenda's parents are portrayed as a harmless, if slightly conservative, old couple, and the film mostly glosses over them kicking Brenda out on the streets for being groomed.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic?: When Frank first starts his cons, he's shown pressing a check in a hotel Bible; also, all the scenes set at Christmastime.
• The Woobie:
  • Poor Brenda. The very first moment Frank sees her...she's crying over a mistake she just got called out on. Then just as she seems to find a man she loves who helps her mend ties with her family, the FBI reveals that her fiancé is a conman and lied to her about everything. In her last scene, she's upset while cooperating with the FBI to catch Frank.
  • Frank as well. Unable to choose between which parent to live with when they divorced, he ran away from home and turned to a life of crime to support himself, wasn't able to settle down with Brenda, and was left shaken and broken after learning his father had died in an accident and his mother had re-married and started a new family without Frank's knowledge. Poor guy. At least things start looking up for him right at the end.

---