Picture Perfect - 25th June 2013

Tuesday Night is Film Night returns to the pink and fluffy safety of the romantic comedy tonight as we focus our attention on;

Picture Perfect

From 1997, Picture Perfect stars the delightful Jennifer Aniston as Kate Mosley, an advertising agency employee. Kate gets overlooked for promotion, because she is single, with no commitments. The head of the firm believes she could quite easily move on, as nothing is keeping her there, for example; no mortgage, no car loan, no kids and no husband. As an excuse, it is pretty lame one, but that is the basis to the start of the film and our story hinges on this fact.

A fact that, that gets turned on it's head, when a colleague of Kate's, (Darcy O'Neil, played by Illeana Douglas) informs the boss that Kate is in fact engaged to be married!

Shock, horror!

To clarify this, we need to skip back to the start of the film, where Kate bumps into Nick (Jan Mohr) at a wedding, where Kate is a guest and Nick is videoing the proceedings. This is where we find out that they both are single and there appears to be an attraction, if only slight. Anyway, a photograph of them together, gets into the hands of Darcy, who then uses this as evidence that Kate and Nick are an item.

Confused?

However, the ruse that Kate is to be married, impresses the top man at Mercer Advertising and he offers Kate the promotion that she has been waiting for.

Queue the panic, as Kate has now got to get her way out this tangle. The promotion is all very well, but it is based on a lie, that she needs to play out, if only she can get Nick to agree.

She meets up with Nick and reveals her tale of woe. She then puts to him a proposition, would he come along to a executive meal with her bosses and some top clients, as an introduction to them, but then act out a bust up, making her look good to her employers and giving Kate an excuse to break up their "relationship", albeit a sham one. Nick agrees to this, based on the fact that he actually likes Kate, but he doesn't really let that show at this stage.

So that is the basic idea, preposterous as it may seem. Slip into the mix a young, but still annoying Kevin Bacon as the roguish Sam Mayfair, the office Lothario and someone Kate has wanted to get to know for awhile, to give this relationship film another twist. Also add into the plot a role for Olympia Dukakis as Rita Mosley, Kate's Mother. Dukakis adds a bit of spice and humour to the story, much needed humour at that, as laughs were few and far between.

Picture Perfect is the formulaic, feelgood film. A romantic comedy, where you know that it will all turn out well in the end, which it does. The journey to get there is based on a weak and lacklustre plot-line  but the acting is good, Aniston is brilliant and lovely to watch, but the film viewed16 years on from it's release, looks dated. It was fun nevertheless and worth a look, if only out of interest.

The slightly flat synopsis and review is reflected in the TNiFN Factor, which is a "could do better" 6 out of 10.