Love her or hate her, more Jennifer Aniston movies are on their way

By Sarah Sluis

Oh, Jennifer Aniston. Ever since you left "Friends" you've been making a career out of romantic comedies. Though none of them has been particularly good, I've seen my fair share, which I guess is the reason you

keep starring in them. People like you even if they leave your movies a little underwhelmed. While I admired your indie starring role in Friends with Money, your tiny role in Office Space earned you way more cred in my book. I missed The Bounty Hunter though I'm interested in seeing The Baster, which sounds like it has some edge to it...except that they just changed the title to the less evocative The Switch. Up next, there's a little more of the same as well as something a bit different.

First, you'll start filming WanderLust this fall with Paul Rudd, director David Wain and producer Judd Apatow. The movie is about a broke couple that moves to a commune. There's two possible options here. One, it goes the typical city-slickers-move-to-the-country route that we've seen hundreds of times. At first the couple is repulsed, then they grow to like their new area and defend it, end of story (For Richer of Poorer, Did You Hear About the Morgans?, etc.) However, I'm a fan of David Wain's Role Models, which was funny and had some spot-on characterizations of niche communities. When he made fun of LARPers (live action role players), it wasn't because he exaggerated the character types, it was because he nailed them to a T. If he can do similar work with the hippy-dippys on the commune, the movie should be in good shape. Having Apatow as a producer won't hurt.

Your second project, Ms. Aniston, also gives me some hope. You'll play one of the eponymous Horrible Bosses. Have we ever seen you play a villain? I'm kind of excited to see you be mean. Jason Bateman, Colin Farrell and Charlie Day (TV's "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia") are also on track to be in the cast. The comedy will center on three friends who decide to murder their bosses in revenge. Seth Gordon (Four Christmases) will direct for Universal. I'm kind of iffy on murder-comedies, because I think the tone can be difficult to nail (although who knows if the planned murders will happen or go awry). It looks like this project comes from a dusted-off script that's been re-tooled by new screenwriters. A good screenplay finally getting its time...or something pulled up to satisfy an actor? We'll know soon enough.

Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler to star in bounty hunting rom-com

By Sarah Sluis

Writer Sarah Thorp must have really got into watching Dog: The Bounty Hunter during the writers' strike,
because her recently greenlit script mines the subject for its meet-cute.  Gerard Butler (P.S. I Love You) will play a bounty hunter hired to track down his ex-wife (Jennifer Aniston), who has skipped bail.  If the movie dispenses with the ridiculousness right off the bat, I see a lot of potential: Romantic comedies often use unbelievable contrivances to get couples to hate each other (the sloppily executed misunderstanding is my pet peeve), but the premise itself makes the inevitable verbal sparring believable by default.

The project will be directed by Andy Tennant, who has made a career out of mediocre romantic comedies (although I really liked Ever After).  He most recently directed Fool's Gold, which, like this bounty-hunting film, placed its unhappy couple in the midst of a money-grubbing plot.  In Sweet Home Alabama, he directed Josh Lucas in a vulgar-but-redeeming hick role, which he could have a chance to reprise here, either with Butler, Aniston, or both. Given that the most prominent cultural
image of a bounty hunter is the blond, mulletted Dog: The Bounty Hunter I mentioned earlier, and his

similarly bleached blonde wife/assistant, I believe I'm making a safe assumption about their characterization.  Although romantic comedies are a pet genre for me, I'm constantly getting my hopes dashed.  This year's 27 Dresses was the most palatable of the bunch, but inspired this observation from our critic Daniel Eagan's review: "Romantic comedies are becoming an endangered species in part because they are so predictable."

There's hope: Most of my favorite romantic comedies over the past few years have deviated from the genre in a most important way: plot.  Legally Blonde and The Devil Wears Prada, for example, were female-oriented career comedies with a romance thrown in.  Judd Apatow-brand comedies (4The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Superbad) place males at the center of the romance, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day was a throwback to vintage screwball and Mean Girls (like Superbad) was a teen comedy with a side romance.  Do these films signal a new age of romantic comedy?  With the social conventions that blocked the love in most romantic comedies dead and gone, it appears career-romance or buddy comedy plus romance might be taking over.