''Picture Perfect'' is a 1997 American
romantic comedy
Romantic comedy (also known as romcom or rom-com) is a subgenre of comedy and slice of life fiction, focusing on lighthearted, humorous plot lines centered on romantic ideas, such as how true love is able to surmount most obstacles. In a typica ...
film directed by
Glenn Gordon Caron
Glenn Gordon Caron (born April 3, 1954), sometimes credited as Glenn Caron, is an American writer, director, and producer, best known for the television series ''Moonlighting'' in the 1980s and ''Medium'' in the 2000s. He lives in Los Angeles, Cal ...
, written by
Arleen Sorkin, and starring
Jennifer Aniston
Jennifer Joanna Aniston (born February 11, 1969) is an American actress and film producer. She is the recipient of various accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award and two Screen Actors Guild Awards. Since her career ...
,
Jay Mohr
Jon Ferguson "Jay" Mohr (born August 23, 1970) is an American actor, comedian and radio host. He is known for his roles as film producer Peter Dragon in the TV comedy series '' Action'', Professor Rick Payne in the TV series ''Ghost Whisperer'' ...
,
Kevin Bacon
Kevin Norwood Bacon (born July 8, 1958) is an American actor. His films include the musical-drama film '' Footloose'' (1984), the controversial historical conspiracy legal thriller '' JFK'' (1991), the legal drama '' A Few Good Men'' (1992), t ...
,
Illeana Douglas
Illeana Hesselberg (born July 25, 1961 or 1965), known professionally as Illeana Douglas, is an American actress and filmmaker. She appeared in three episodes of '' Six Feet Under'', for which she received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination as O ...
,
Olympia Dukakis
Olympia Dukakis (June 20, 1931 – May 1, 2021) was an American actress. She performed in more than 130 stage productions, more than 60 films and in 50 television series. Best known as a screen actress, she started her career in theater. Not lon ...
, and
Anne Twomey. The film centers around a young advertising executive's life which becomes increasingly complicated when, in order to impress her boss, she pretends to be engaged to a man she just met. ''Picture Perfect'' was released on August 1, 1997, by
20th Century Fox
20th Century Studios, Inc. (previously known as 20th Century Fox) is an American film production company headquartered at the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles. As of 2019, it serves as a film production arm of Walt Dis ...
. It received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $44.3 million against an $18 million budget.
Plot
Kate is struggling in the advertising business in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
: she cannot move forward despite her talent. Her boss, Mr. Mercer, passes her up for a promotion because she is "not stable enough". Her co-worker, Darcy, invents a story claiming Kate is engaged to Nick, a freelance videographer who lives in
Massachusetts
Massachusetts (Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut Massachusett_writing_systems.html" ;"title="nowiki/> məhswatʃəwiːsət.html" ;"title="Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət">Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət'' En ...
, with whom Kate had her picture taken during a friend's wedding.
All seems to work out well for Kate and she gets her promotion, but after Nick saves a little girl from a fire and winds up in the news, Kate is asked to bring her alleged fiancé to dinner with Mercer and his wife. She goes to Boston to ask Nick to do it and to "break up" with her during the evening. Nick, who likes Kate, agrees to please Kate. Meanwhile, Sam, a colleague that Kate had always wanted, takes notice of her because she is engaged, and they have sex on two occasions.
Nick arrives in New York and stays at Kate's apartment, and as they get to know each other, she starts to like him. When they are out at the dinner with Mercer, Nick compliments Kate and expresses his desire for a future with her. Kate just wants their "fight" to happen, and after unsuccessfully trying to incite Nick at the dinner table, she pays a restaurant employee to call her mobile phone and makes out that Nick is having an affair with an ex-girlfriend. Nick figures it out and finally plays along. Next day, after his attempt to woo Kate fails, he returns to Boston.
A week later, Kate finds a special gift which Nick had left her, and it prompts her to admit the fake to Mercer and her co-workers, stating that she was dressing for the job she wanted (repeating a line that Mercer had used on her earlier regarding her instability). When she tells him she is quitting, Mercer admits how he had exaggerated his own past at one point in his life. He lets Kate keep her job, and suggests she take a few days off to go to see Nick.
Kate walks in while Nick is recording a church wedding and he rebuffs her attempts to patch things up, until she interrupts the ceremony at a crucial point. Watched by the entire wedding assembly, she apologizes for the way she treated him. He invites her to stay for the wedding reception and dinner afterwards, and they embrace, as the congregation applaud them.
Cast
Production
Academy Award
The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...
winner
Tom Fleischman is the
re-recording mixer
A re-recording mixer in North America, also known as a dubbing mixer in Europe, is a post-production audio engineer who mixes recorded dialogue, sound effects and music to create the final version of a soundtrack for a feature film, television p ...
of the film. ''Picture Perfect'' also consists of other Academy Award nominees such as
Les Lazarowitz,
Jane Robinson, and
Debra Schutt.
The movie was shot in June and July 1996.
Kaley Cuoco later revealed that "I was the last name in the credits (credited as ‘little girl’).. when I saw the movie, they had cut my one line".
Reception
On the
review aggregator
A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, the film has an approval rating of 47%, based on 43 reviews, with an average score of 5.4/10. On
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...
it has a weighted average score of 44 out of 100, based on reviews from 16 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences surveyed by
CinemaScore gave the film a grade "B−" on scale of A to F.
Roger Ebert found the film at odds with itself, noting how the script has poor storytelling elements but contains "nice dialogue touches" delivered by the characters, saying that "it's a shame the plot is so contrived, because parts of this
ovie
Ovie is a given name, nickname and surname. It may refer to:
Nickname
* Alexander Ovechkin (born 1985), Russian ice hockey player
* Ovie Alston (1905–1989), American jazz trumpeter, vocalist, and bandleader
* Ovie Ejaria (born 1997), English f ...
are really pretty good."
Janet Maslin
Janet R. Maslin (born August 12, 1949) is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for ''The New York Times''. She served as a ''Times'' film critic from 1977 to 1999 and as a book critic from 2000 to 2015. In 2000 Maslin ...
of ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' called it a "light, undemanding comedy", commending its use of sitcom humor, bits of satire and the performances of Aniston, Douglas and Bacon, concluding that it "bounces busily among these players until it has to slow down and pretend to be sincere." Marc Savlov of ''
The Austin Chronicle
''The Austin Chronicle'' is an alternative weekly newspaper published every Thursday in Austin, Texas, United States. The paper is distributed through free news-stands, often at local eateries or coffee houses frequented by its targeted demogr ...
'' heavily criticized the film for having the aesthetics of "an over-long, over-nice, made-for-TV movie that goes nowhere quick." He gave notice to Aniston's performance lacking sustainability to capture the big screen, and bringing the rest of the main cast to her acting level.
[ ]
Box office
The film opened at number 5 at the North American box office making $7.8 million in its opening weekend. It eventually earned over $44 million worldwide, against a budget of $18 million.
Soundtrack
References
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Picture Perfect (1997 Film)
1997 films
1997 romantic comedy films
1990s American films
1990s English-language films
20th Century Fox films
American romantic comedy films
Films directed by Glenn Gordon Caron
Films scored by Carter Burwell
Films set in New York City