'Catch Me if You Can' (2002) Opening Title Sequence

‘Catch me if you can’ has a great opening to a film; it’s fresh, interesting and sets the audience up for the movie. The opening gives the audience tonnes of information about the film (in actually fact it tells the whole story) but the animation helps keeps this information clouded letting the audience question what they have just witnessed.

The opening suggests that this film has hybrid genres consisting of thriller and mystery. This is shown through enigma code what tells us there is a chase by the constant running and chasing in the cartoon and also by the title.  This chase adds tension to the audience making it a thriller. The disguises worn by ‘Leonardo Dicaprio’ lets you question the motive of wearing disguises showing that it is a mystery, also the chase itself and the titles let you question what is ‘Leonardo Dicaprio’ running from? However you've never seen ‘Leonardo Dicaprio’ escape or get captured leaving the narrative open.

The reason I know it's ‘Leonardo Dicaprio’ is because arrows point at the cartoon characters when the actors name comes up implying this cartoon character represents them. ‘Leonardo Dicaprio’ character is always seen to be one step ahead of ‘Tom Hanks’ what suggests he is just that much smarter and also that he is the one being chased. He often wears different outfits/disguises implying that he is a confident impressionist and also that he is the one hiding from ‘Tom Hanks’ who wears only one outfit.  That fact ‘Tom Hanks’ is usually only a second behind ‘Leonardo Dicaprio’ last position also suggests that ‘Tom Hanks’ is always so close but never quite good enough.

The music seems to be 1960’s and is fast pace most of the sequence. It is retro and upbeat. The music fits the animation brilliantly adding the atmospheric feel of suspense and fast pace. The music also has sneaky sections to it much softer than the rest of the piece this helps show the theme of sneakiness alongside the sneaky animated ‘Leonardo Dicaprio’. This sequence also suggests other themes such as imitating shown by all the disguises; brains/smarts shown by the clever imitating and ‘Leonardo Dicaprio’ always being one step ahead and possibly wealth shown by the big mansion with woman beside an orange swimming pool. The mansion is one suggested setting of the film shown through this sequence. It also suggests that there is a hospital and airport. Also it suggests the film is based in America shown by the national identifiable yellow taxi.