Picture Perfect (1997)

Director: Glenn Gordon Caron                       Writer: Arleen Sorkin & Paul Slansky
Film Score: Carter Burwell                            Cinematography: Paul Sarossy
Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Jay Mohr, Kevin Bacon and Olympia Dukakis

I had, of course, seen Jennifer Aniston on Friends, but had never ventured into her feature films. Apparently I haven’t missed much. And in this case, I wish I had. Picture Perfect is far from it: flawed in concept, flawed in execution it is really the definition of a bad film. As the credits flashed by I saw the name Sorkin, which has carried a lot of weight in Hollywood ever since Arron Sorkin’s incredible first screenplay, the smash hit A Few Good Men. But this film was scripted by Arleen Sorkin, a soap opera actress married to Christopher Lloyd the writer, and that makes sense. The screenplay is full of the unprincipled characters that populate daytime television, and not the sort of thing that most people want to see in a feature film, especially a romantic comedy.

Director Glenn Gordon Caron has a little bit more credibility. Having written for romcom TV shows like Remington Steele and Moonlighting he then moved into directing films, including Warren Beaty and Annete Benning’s remake of An Affair to Remember, which was probably why he was given the helm of this film. But his directing career never really recovered after this and he has only directed three TV episodes since while returning to writing. Add to that a score by Carter Burwell, whose music I have never really enjoyed, and the whole thing adds up to much less than the sum of its parts.

Aniston plays a minor advertising executive in a big, New York firm. She comes up with a great idea that lands the firm a big account, and yet she is not put on the team to work the account. Before she can quit in a fit of rage, her boss, Illeana Douglas, tells her to go to the wedding she is attending that weekend and they will iron things out on Monday. At the wedding Aniston meets Jay Mohr, a friend of the groom who is filming the occasion for the couple. At one point she is also caught with him by one of the numerous Polaroids at the reception. When she has her meeting with the boss, he claims the reason she’s not being promoted is that she’s single, she doesn’t need the job and therefore he can’t depend on her not to quit. So Douglas takes it upon herself to show the Polaroid to the boss claiming that Mohr is her fiancé, and suddenly she’s on the team. Another reason Aniston goes along with the deception is because the slimy guy she wants to be with at work, Kevin Bacon, only becomes attracted to her when he thinks she’s cheating on her fiancé.

So of course Aniston lies in order to bed Bacon, lies to her boss in order to move up, asks Mohr to pretend to be her fiancé and then lies to him. How he falls in love with her, when she makes it perfectly clear she doesn’t want him, makes no sense at all. When her boss finally learns of the deception, even he thinks it’s great. Olympia Dukakis is completely wasted as Aniston’s mother, acting more like the child in the relationship. Aniston is very unlikable, so seemingly brainless about her personal life it strains credulity to believe she is that successful professionally. Mohr is really the only likeable character in the film, but by allowing himself to be manipulated and treated so poorly, the audience can’t help but lose sympathy for him by the end. Picture Perfect is simply a bad romantic comedy and, as such, should be avoided.