Jennifer Aniston is a terrific comic television actress. This is not to damn her with faint praise – since the 1970s, comedians have done their best work in that medium – but it does mean she’s a less appealing movie star. With her predilection for double takes, cocked eyebrows, and talking from one side of the mouth, her shtick (like Sarah Jessica Parker’s and Tina Fey’s) has never successfully translated to the big screen. Magnified to that scale, she seems more like Ethel Merman on the Paleo Diet than a true screwball siren. Yet she soldiers on in film, even as most of her “Friends” costars have found their footing in the brave new world of premium TV.
So it’s no surprise that Aniston occasionally tries her hand at serious roles: She played a cleaning woman in “Friends With Money” (2006) and an unhappy clerk in “The Good Girl” (2002). But in both those films – as in “Cake,” which is now playing in wide release – she merely eliminated her shtick without replacing it with other colors. The resulting characters are Debbie Downers: flatliners from a woman capable of sizzling one-liners. “Cake” is a particular disappointment, though the blame cannot entirely be assigned to Aniston. It’s tough to warm up to another entry in the growing genre that Grantland’s Wesley Morris has called the “dead-child movies.” Continue Reading →
