Entertainment

Jennifer Aniston is Back Where She Belongs

by Aly Semigran

It's been a little while since we've seen the golden girl on screen, but Jennifer Aniston's upcoming comedy Life of Crime finally has a trailer. In it, the actress plays a woman held hostage by criminals (played by Mos Def and John Hawkes) who demand $1 million for her life, only her lousy hubby (Tim Robbins) who wants to divorce her anyway, is too busy having an affair (with Isla Fisher) to do anything about it. Come on, nobody takes Jennifer Aniston for ransom and gets away with it. And nobody can paint the 45-year-old actress in a corner, either. While she has seen massive success with broad, mainstream comedies like We're the Millers, Just Go With It, and The Break-Up, her best work on the big screen has been in darker movies like Life of Crime.

Despite some groovy 1970's threads, Aniston's part is a pretty unglamorous role for one of the most beautiful actresses in the world. But, that's never stopped Aniston from taking risks in more off-beat movies before, and it's garnered some pretty great results. Case in point: her stripped-down performances as women hurt by troubled relationships in the dark comedies The Good Girl and Friends With Money. (She's seriously great in both, check them out.) And while Horrible Bosses wasn't a dark comedy per se (not in the traditional sense, anyway), Aniston shedding her good girl image — the very one she earned from Friends and that she so often plays in rom-coms like Bruce Almighty or He's Just Not That Into You — was the most outrageous part of the male-driven flick. Hopefully she'll be able to hold her own, and exceed expectations, once again with Life of Crime.

Check out the trailer for the film that opens in theaters on Aug. 29 and is based on the late, great Elmore Leonard's novel The Switch here: