The Big Picture

Actor-turned-director Guest presents a comic cautionary tale about a young film school graduate (Bacon) seduced into the compromises necessary to make his first big picture - a snowbound country-house drama that almost ends up as a teen comedy called 'Beach Nuts'. Bacon is engagingly naive as the starstruck director whose artistic pretensions are whittled away by a slimy studio exec (Walsh). He also becomes increasingly estranged from homely girlfriend (Longstreth) and best pal cinematographer (McKean), and carnal temptation comes in the heavenly form of a TV starlet (Hatcher) who sees him as a ticket to big screen fame. The movie references may strike some as in-jokey, but Guest's likeable film has enough jaundiced sideswipes and lighter chuckles to see it through its slacker spells. Even so, an increasing sense of bittiness creeps in, emphasised by a series of cameos: loopy Jennifer Jason Leigh, an Irish John Cleese, judge Roddy McDowall, and spaced-out agent Martin Short (whose contribution alone is worth the price of admission).