'Picture Perfect'

By Scott Hettrick

"Picture Perfect" (20th Century Fox, priced for rental, rated PG-13) 1997. Directed by Glen Gordon Caron. Starring Jennifer Aniston, Jay Mohr, Kevin Bacon, Olympia Dukakis, Illeana Douglas and Kevin Dunn.

Jennifer Anniston has a tough challenge, making her superficial and self-absorbed character in "Picture Perfect" sympathetic enough for viewers to care about.

She just barely succeeds, and consequently, so does this romantic comedy.

Anniston doesn't get much help from Kevin Bacon, whose non-committal character is even more self-absorbed than Anniston's, or Jay Mohr, whose adoring, wholesome character is just too good to be true.

With an ultimate goal of seeing one of her advertising ideas wind up on a giant billboard in Times Square or in a commercial shown during the Super Bowl, Kate (Anniston) is working hard to move up through the ranks of an ad agency.

But her boss is reluctant to assign any accounts to the charge of a single woman who could bolt the agency at any time since she has no home mortgage to keep her in debt or a spouse to tie her down. (Like married people don't change jobs?)

When a co-worker tries to help out by fabricating a story of Kate being engaged to a wedding video-photographer, a rather obvious chain of situations is set in motion. First, Kate asks the relative-stranger videographer (who suddenly draws national attention for a heroic act) to pose as her fiancé during an important dinner with her boss. Of course, the photographer, Nick, (Mohr) falls in love with Kate at the same time Kate has finally drawn the attention of her desirable co-worker Sam (Bacon).

It takes Kate an inordinate amount of time to realize that Sam is only suddenly interested in her now because she is engaged to another. When she finally figures him out, it takes her an additional too-long chunk of time to realize that she is in love with the suffering Nick.

But things finally get all worked out after some mildly amusing and slightly charming moments along the way, which combine to offer a worthwhile evening's viewing.

"Buddy" (Columbia TriStar, $14.95, rated PG) 1997. Directed by Caroline Thompson. Starring Rene Russo, Robbie Coltrane, Alan Cumming, Irma P. Hall and Paul Reubens.

"Buddy" goes wrong in almost every which way possible.

Designed as a family movie, there is almost no appeal for kids in this slow-moving and sometimes dark and brooding docudrama about an upper-class society woman who has adopted and spoils a menagerie of animals -- particularly her chimps and Buddy the gorilla -- more than most mothers spoil their human children.

Buddy, an orphaned gorilla adopted by New York socialite Trudy Lintz (Rene Russo) during the 1920s, has almost no personality and is consequently upstaged throughout the movie by the active and adorable chimpanzees that also are kept by Lintz.

It's doubtful if the puppet and robotic versions of Buddy would ever have been convincing, particularly as a baby. But with so many real chimps running around, they are a constant blatant reminder of Buddy's unfortunate artificialness.

Even the story, which is based on a true tale, is remarkably trite, with Lintz learning the same lesson that mothers of real children do: that you can't hang onto your babies forever. Eventually they need to be set free, particularly if they are big apes.

(c) 1998, Scott Hettrick. Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate