The Academy has a long history of rewarding fetching troupers who consent to part from makeup and shampoo long enough to flagrantly play against type. Jennifer Aniston finds out the hard way that the road to Oscar is anything but a cakewalk. Unlike Charlize Theron, who quite literally transformed into a titular monster before our eyes, apart from one film (The Good Girl), there’s not enough memorable work ‘tween Friends and Cake to shore up — let alone speak in favor of - an Aniston canon. Jen tries hard as a pain-wracked, prescription drug-addicted accident survivor — she spends half the film on her back, hence the mordantly prone ‘a’ in the title art — who makes miserable the lives of all she encounters. The material never ventures far from her small screen roots; director Daniel Barnz and screenwriter Patrick Tobin fittingly prepare the audience for all that’s to unfold. (2014) — Scott Marks
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