Why I love . . . #10 Jennifer Aniston

I know you're expecting me to come up with something trite about Jen's turn as Rachel Green, the sexy girl next door in Friends.  And for a while in the 90s my wife and I did watch the show religiously, splitting a bottle of wine on a Friday night and hoping two very young children would stay asleep upstairs.  It was well written, for all its fakeness (no blacks, no drugs) and for all that it told you as much about TV production values at the end of the American century as it did about human nature.

But no.  I love Jen because I think she is a really good comic actress.  Last night, during the two hours we had to kill while our daughter - not even born in Friends' heyday - was in a rehearsal, we went to see We're The Millers.  The fact that Aniston's name was on the poster was off-putting rather than the reverse, because she has repeatedly appeared in the dreckiest rom-com rubbish opposite sleazeballs like Vince Vaughan.  But We're The Millers was really good (if you are amused by people being bitten on the testicles by a large spider; I am).

Aniston plays an ageing stripper (she's 44) who is lured into taking part in a drug deal by a small-timer who needs the cover of an All-American family to get a trailer full of cannabis across the Mexican border.  An awkward teenage boy is recruited to play the awkward teenage son; a homeless girl is the rebellious daughter.  The film riffs on their burgeoning attempts, being alone in the world, to form family ties of their own.  It could have been excruciating, but it's very funny (very crude) and actually quite touching; and a lot of this is down to Aniston.

Surgery or no surgery, her face has worn well.  It lacks the freshness of the sit-com years, but Aniston uses the certain gauntness which has now set in to good effect.  I never noticed before that she has rather a mean mouth; actually she probably doesn't have a mean mouth; she probably made it look mean; but it works for the character.  And as always in Friends, her timing is impeccable. For those who doubt whether We're The Millers is quite the thing (and it isn't), the moment in the closing credits when the crew surprise Aniston with the Friends theme tune is by itself worth the price of admission.

It's an enduring mystery to me why someone so famous, for whom all Hollywood doors must have opened, could have ended up making so many turkeys.  Bad judgment?  Bad advice?  If you're reading this, Jen, take it from me - Shakespeare is the way to go.  I would pay good money to see you as Beatrice in Much Ado. Or Kate in Taming of the Shrew.  Come to England.  Do some theatre.  It worked for Kevin Spacey.