Film Review - Cake

Jennifer Aniston does acting. 

Not just turning up and looking pretty, or pretending to be a bit empty headed, but actual acting, with character development and everything. Some of it is a bit forced but I felt that was more the scripting and direction than her performance. This is the sort of role she is going to have to take more often if she wants to be a serious actress and start appearing on the nominations list for a future Oscar. She isn't quite there yet, but again I am not completely convinced that it is her skill falling short rather than those around her. 

Her injury make-up is very good. When she is in the pool and you can see her legs the scarring and stitching marks were as accurate as anything I have seen. 

And that is just about where the good bits of this film have to end.
Considering the weight of the rest of the cast it is slightly disappointing that Aniston is left to carry pretty much the entire film herself. As always Anna Kendrick merely has to turn up to make an impression and virtual unknown Adriana Barraza does an overly stereotyped cliche role to give Aniston some background to work with but a lot of the rest of the star turns do little or nothing. 

Sam Worthington and Felicity Huffman do very little, and their respective career histories distract very much from what they are doing. And Worthington's character makes no sense, why does he just let her in the house, and from there all his behaviour just gets more bizarre to fit around the core character? 

And then it starts to get really silly from there. If you are going to have someone turn up for a 30 second role, say two lines and disappear; why bother wasting someone of the calibre of William H Macy on it? Similarly the two short scenes that Mamie Gummer (Meryl Streep's daughter) turns up for could have been done by any jobbing actor. Lucy Punch's single scene appearance just leaves you waiting for a bad joke to close it out. And Chris Messina as the ex-husband is just flat. I couldn't help but thinking that switching him with Worthington would have given them both more suitable roles. 

The story is patched together in a way that doesn't really make sense. 
The direction is a bit hit and miss. 
The ending is 20 minutes too late, everyone thought it was ending on the railway tracks, the bit tacked on after that is just meaningless. 

Overall 6 out of 10.