Jennifer Anistons Cake is a heaping slice of Oscar-grubbing

Cake

Running time: 91 minutes. Rated R (profanity, drug abuse, sex).

Hollywood script meeting, indie division:

“We want to do this film called ‘Cake.’ It’s about a grieving woman suffering with chronic pain.”

“So what happens?”

“Not much. Mostly she lurches around popping pills and swilling wine.”

“So?”

“So we got Jennifer Aniston to do it.”

“So?”

“So ... Jen really wants a nomination.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so? Let’s do it!”

Gunning for the near-annual Ugly Makeup Oscar, Aniston proves, as always, a modestly gifted actress, only this time with scars and weedy hair.

She plays Claire, a lawyer covered with scars who rumbles stiffly around her lovely LA house (a better title for the film would have been “Frankanistein”) as we wait around to find out how she got the scars. (Big reveal: car accident).

To pass the time, she chats with the ghost (Anna Kendrick) of a suicidal girl she knew slightly from a chronic pain support group and strikes up an unlikely friendship with the girl’s husband (Sam Worthington), with whom Claire has something else in common. Throughout, Claire issues bitchy sarcastic quips, throws tantrums and nearly gets arrested.

So, mostly, the movie is sheer contrivance. OK, there is one transcendent instance of strange comedy involving Costco vodka, and a few instances of genuine-seeming anguish.

But where does that lead us? It’s not like the film has any insights about grieving or chronic suffering. Claire’s life is a pain in the neck, back, legs, head and heart. So what? What we, in the audience, are getting out of this movie is no more than what Claire’s circle gets out of her, which is: not much.

Everyone around Claire exists only to talk about Claire; even her long-enduring Mexican housekeeper, played by Adriana Barraza, goes home for the night and ... talks about Claire. Essentially, there is no plot and only one character, so the film’s success rides completely on how we respond to her.

Yet, when Claire is meant to be tormented, Aniston seems merely bitchy. When the character is supposed to be cutting, she seems only rude. Aniston reaches for anguished and comes across as pissy. Tragic? No, just irritating.

When Claire, in an especially dark moment, lies down on a railway bed, I did finally feel sympathy: for the guy driving the train and all the damn paperwork she’d be saddling him with.

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