'Picture' Is Nowhere Near Perfect

"Picture Perfect," a spongy romantic comedy starring Jennifer Aniston, is like one of those photos that come with the wallet: pleasant, impersonal and ultimately disposable. It does, however, fill the space until it's replaced with a picture of genuine value and meaning.

While many romances turn on far-fetched premises, this one asks audiences to leave their brains at the door. At one point, the heroine herself admits the setup "sounds like something right out of `The Patty Duke Show.' " Actually, the more apt comparison is "Friends," which asks viewers to buy the off-again, on-again affair between Aniston's driven junior designer and David Schwimmer's whiny anthropologist.

In "Picture Perfect," Aniston's Kate is even less believable opposite Jay Mohr's Nick, a puppyish wedding videographer who all but rolls over to have his belly scratched whenever she's nearby. Kate, however, is about as cuddly as a barracuda taunted with chum. Admittedly shallow and obsessed with her advertising career, Kate has the life's goal of doing a commercial that runs during the Academy Awards ceremony.

But her boss is standing in the way of her advancement because he wants his top executives married with children and big mortgages. If she's willing to settle down and dress like a grown-up, he just might assign her to the agency's big mustard company account. After all, she did come up with Gulden's new campaign, "No. 2's not so bad." In fact, the whole movie is practically a commercial for the sticky sandwich spread.

Upon returning from a shopping spree, Kate persuades Nick, whom she met briefly at a friend's wedding, to pretend to be her fiance. Of course, he is only too glad to fly down from Boston, spend the weekend on her couch and go out to dinner with Kate, her boss and the executives from Gulden.

Nick, an earnest soul who subsequently puts up with all manner of abuse on her account, is smitten, but Kate prefers the office stud muffin (Kevin Bacon). A guy who's had a chronic case of the can't-commits, he's suddenly interested now that she's officially unavailable.

Will Kate come to her senses before Mr. Right gets away? Or will she succumb to the smarmy je ne sais quoi of Bacon's scrawny Casanova?

The truth is Kate has become such a hateful, self-centered character at this juncture that she no longer deserves the traditional happy ending, but an old-fashioned out-in-the-cold comeuppance. On the other hand, Kate's so wispily drawn that it hardly matters what becomes of this figment.

"Picture Perfect," the obvious heir to "My Best Friend's Wedding," isn't fit to hold that so-so romance's train. Though director and co-writer Glenn Gordon Caron of TV's "Moonlighting" is no stranger to romantic comedy, he simply lacks the vision demanded by the bigger frame.

Picture Perfect is rated PG-13 for sexual innuendo and naughty language.