Picture Perfect (1997, Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Bacon)

Jennifer Aniston stars alongside Kevin Bacon and Olympia Dukakis in a sprightly romantic comedy from the creator of Moonlighting. She plays an ambitious advertising designer whose life takes a complicated turn when she fakes her engagement to wedding photographer Jay Mohr to get promotion.

Single Kate (Aniston) is incensed when she’s passed up for promotion due to her flippant life as a single girl, even though it was her idea that won her company a new account. To add insult to injury, Kate has developed a crush on office colleague Sam (Bacon), who is unresponsive to her charms.

But Kate needs a man – as interfering mum (Dukakis) keeps on telling her – and best friend Darcy (Illeana Douglas) has just the guy – Nick (Mohr), a sweet-natured nobody that Kate once met at a wedding in Boston. Darcy has a picture of the two of them together and shows it to Kate’s boss, Mr Mercer, fabricating the story of the pair’s engagement. It’s an inspired idea, and works a treat. Kate is promoted, and Sam is stirred into immediate flirtation.

But then Nick saves a girl from a fire, and when his face is plastered across the news, Mercer demands to meet and congratulate him. Desperate, Kate travels to Boston to persuade Nick to come to the Big Apple for a weekend, pose as her fiancé and, at supper with Mercer, stage a public break-up of their engagement. Nick readily accepts. He’d fallen in love with the feisty blonde the moment he set eyes on her and now hopes to win her affections in return. But naturally, the course of true love never runs smooth… for either party.

This was Aniston’s first major role for the big screen and she used it to display a couple of her more obvious talents – every scene sees her in a tight top, low-cut dress or bra. Thankfully, her comic touch gets the better of her cleavage most of the time. As the Guardian’s Richard Williams wrote, ‘Aniston shows herself to be a more gifted light comedy actress than Julia Roberts.’ Here she moulds Kate into a 3D character, perfectly capable of being a bitch when it’s needed (especially to poor Nick), or as dizzy as Friends’ Rachel. The rest of the cast are impressive too, but Jay Mohr (who played a slimeball agent in Jerry Maguire) earned special mention from Empire’ s critic, who wrote ‘it is Mohr who actually shines, skilfully giving an underwritten role a genuinely deft sense of nobility and charm.’

production details
USA | 105 minutes | 1997

Director: Glenn Gordon Caron
Writers: Arleen Sorkin, Paul Slansky, Glenn Gordon Caron

cast
Jennifer Aniston as Kate Mosley
Olympia Dukakis as Rita Mosley
Kevin Bacon as Sam Mayfair
Illeana Douglas as Darcy
Jay Mohr as Nick
Kevin Dunn as Mr. Mercer