PICTURE PERFECT Directed by Glenn Gordon Caron Starring Kevin Bacon, Jennifer Aniston, Jay Mohr, Olympia Dukakis
Jennifer Aniston has a terrific smile. Too bad it wasn't used more in this movie.
PICTURE PERFECT is about a 28 year old woman named Kate (Jennifer Aniston) who is having trouble in both her career and in finding a potential mate of whom both she and her mother (Olympia Dukakis) would approve of. Kate's boss doesn't want to promote her because he believes she has no real commitment to her job. She also can't seem to find the right person through regular dating. So she fixes her efforts on Sam (Kevin Bacon), a man who is not interested in a woman unless she is unavailable. Kate attends the wedding of a friend, at the behest of her mother, and there she meets Nick (Jay Mohr), a videographer. In order to make Kate's boss think she is more committed to her job, Kate's friend Darcy (Illeana Douglas) gets people to believe Kate is engaged to Nick. Kate, thinking she can use this situation to get Sam, manipulates and uses Nick to that end. Nick starts to fall for Kate regardless, and in the end Kate realizes she wants Nick instead. Complicated for a date movie? You decide.
This movie is supposed to be a romantic comedy, but it comes off as a romantic situation. I felt as though there should have been some commercial breaks somewhere in the middle. It wasn't because the director Glenn Gordon Caron was a television director before he became a film director. It's just that this movie was not endearing enough to be a romantic comedy. There are a few scenes which are endearing, but not enough to carry the entire movie. A romantic comedy has a gimmick that makes it work: in PRETTY WOMAN it was a hooker with a heart of gold; in WHEN HARRY MET SALLY it was two lovers from "just friends;" in GREEN CARD it was a marriage of convenience. In PICTURE PERFECT, the gimmick is a lie to get what someone wants. The execution of that gimmick is where the overall problem with this movie lies.
I saw right off the bat what this movie was trying to be. Have you ever seen the remarriage comedies of the late 30's and early 40's? Some of the best known are THE LADY EVE starring Barbara Stanwyck and Peter Fonda, THE PHILADELPHIA STORY starring Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart, and IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. These are movies about a woman who is getting "married," either explicitly or implicitly, to one man, but winds up spending most of her time with another man. What she finds out during the course of the film is that she really belongs with the man she spent most of her time with and not with the man she is supposed to "marry." This formula for a genre was discovered by Stanley Cavell and is detailed in his book PURSUITS OF HAPPINESS. It was clear to me that this movie was trying to be a remarriage comedy. It falls short in a few places.
The best modern-day execution of a remarriage comedy I have seen in recent years is THE CUTTING EDGE starring Moira Kelly and D. B. Sweeney. Moira Kelly's character, Kate, spends most of her time with D. B. Sweeney's character, Doug, training for ice-skating championships. Kate is engaged to be married to Hale. Notwithstanding explaining the whole story, Kate spends most of her time with Doug, believing she is in love with Hale. She eventually ends up dumping Hale. D. B. Sweeney had a lot more screen time than Jay Mohr did in PICTURE PERFECT, and Hale took a backseat to the Kate-Doug relationship. It was easier to see why Doug would fall for Kate in THE CUTTING EDGE. In PICTURE PERFECT, more screen time is devoted to Sam than Nick, and not enough time is devoted to Nick in order to understand his character.
Nick barely has anything to do with the story; he just comes in when it's convenient to do so. I found it hard to see how he would help this woman who is just using him for her own ends. I also found it hard to believe he would take her back at the end. If the story committed more time to Mohr's character, I may have been able to see why he would fall in love with her. But as the story stands, Nick seems to be a little stupid. Stupid with love? I don't believe it.
I am sorry to say that PICTURE PERFECT is run-of-the-mill Hollywood entertainment. The talents of Jennifer Aniston, Jay Mohr, Kevin Bacon, Olympia Dukakis, and Illeana Douglas are put to meager use in this movie. On the other hand, I guess you could say that it is the perfect date movie: the kind where you can pay more attention to the date you brought to the movie rather than the movie itself.
THE SNAPMAN
snapman-hhp@juno.com
(Roger Rubio)
--
"Gravity cannot be held responsible for falling in love."
-- Albert Einstein
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Home Page: http://www.unm.edu/~rsnappy/rodge.html
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