Picture Perfect . Memphis Flyer . 08-11-97

Picture Perfect

DIRECTED BY: Glenn Gordon Caron

REVIEWED: 08-11-97

It feels like an also-ran coming on the heels of the year's earlier, and better, romantic comedies -- Jerry Maguire and My Best Friend's Wedding. Picture Perfect, written by Glenn Gordon Caron, Arleen Sorkin, and Paul Slansky and directed by Caron, generally skirts the dramatic shadings of those two films, and since it is television's Friends' Jennifer Aniston's showcase leap to the big screen, it was wise to do so. Aniston is built for light comedy -- physically, vocally, and in terms of general screen appeal. She manages to carry the picture, but that's damning with faint praise, and she does so with a notably spare actor's vocabulary of TV-sitcom facial expressions and gesticulations.

Aniston plays Kate, a bright young woman seeking to get ahead in an advertising agency. In the silly, romantic course of things, Kate must cope with one colleague who is a charming sexual predator (Kevin Bacon), a boss who takes his role as corporate paterfamilias to extremes, and a love-interest (Jay Mohr) whom she must dupe in order to fulfill her professional ambition. It's all fairly lighthearted, but there is an unmistakable whiff of '90s retro-feminism; wiles and cleavage seem to edge out competence and integrity. Like My Best Friend's Wedding, Jerry Maguire, and to a degree even The Mirror Has Two Faces, this script owes a debt to the screwball comedies of the '30s and '40s. The debt is not very admirably discharged. Aniston has a certain appeal, a sort of working-gal feistiness. But her persona doesn't have the strength to make up for the script's contrivances and mixed signals. Some viewers may find themselves wistfully imagining what Barbara Stanwyck might have done with the role.

--Hadley Hury

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