Genre: Comedy
Starring: Hilary Duff, Heather Locklear, Chris Noth, Vanessa Lengies
Director: Mark Rosman
Rating: PG

SYNOPSIS:

In The Perfect Man, teenager Holly Hamilton (Hilary Duff) is tired of moving every time her single mom Jean (Heather Locklear) has another personal meltdown involving yet another second-rate guy. To distract her mother from her latest bad choice, Holly conceives the perfect plan for the perfect man...an imaginary secret admirer who will romance Jean and boost her shaky self-esteem. When the virtual relationship takes off, Holly finds herself having to produce the suitor, borrowing her friend's charming and handsome Uncle Ben (Chris Noth) as the face behind the e-mails, notes and gifts. Holly must resort to increasingly desperate measures to keep the ruse alive and protect her mom's newfound happiness. . . almost missing the real perfect man when he does come along.

DISC REVIEW :

If you were looking for a perfect man, where would you go? Why, a Hilary Duff movie, of course! “The Perfect Man” tells the unbelievable and time-wasting “story” of a family of three girls that moves as frequently as Duff churns out movie duds. Aw, just kidding! But you get the idea: they move around a lot, and at every conclusion of their single mom Jean’s (Heather Locklear) numerous relationships. This time they’re packed off to Brooklyn, New York, and Holly (Hilary Duff) hatches a plan to stop her mother from getting her heart broken again – by sending flowers and letters to her guileless mother, posing as a perfect man. Can anyone say incest?

So alright, of course it’s not really incest, because Holly has a point of reference. She is able to consult her new best friend Amy’s Uncle Ben (Chris Noth) and manages to wrangle countless quotable quotes from him to insert into her fake letters. A smitten Jean laps this up because she is crazy and incredibly, she never wises up until Holly finds her lies finally stretched to their limits. That’s right, Holly stopped lying not because she felt guilty, or realized that she was in the wrong, but because she ran out of lies. I guess this is supposed to counsel Duff’s tween fans about the severity of lying but perhaps Duff’s fans are wiser than her and will abstain from watching this movie.

The sub plot, as you will not be surprised to hear, is that Holly has a new love interest once she starts school (of course), and you will be even less shocked that he is the emo-loving, comic-strip-drawing adorable-new-age-geek type of teenage dreamboats so fashionable in Hollywood now. There is still a whole host of supporting characters that I will not mention in detail because “The Perfect Man” is essentially a cluster of nonsensical plots that makes you question the intelligence of mankind while watching it.

Furthermore, in keeping with current trends, Holly keeps an online blog named GirlOnTheMove.com and as she dictates her posts, we’re supposed to believe that she’s real witty and spunky, thus debunking the stereotype of teenage heroines being bimbotic and stick thin. As the girls are en route to Brooklyn they play a word game, where players come back and forth with words that have “tic” in it, and while the banter culminates in Holly’s ostensibly clever comeback (“It’s genetic.”) to Jean’s “[You’re] psychotic,” I must point out that the first contribution Holly dourly offers (“[This is] tragic.”) doesn’t even have “tic” in it. The writing in this movie? Tragic! Pathetic! Idiotic! A shtick!

“The Perfect Man” is supposed to be a touching mother-daughter drama packaged in a lighthearted romantic comedy, but it fails on both counts because it is too inane and shallow to be moving and too inane and shallow to be comic. In any case, would you trust a movie so pompously titled “The Perfect Man” to be poignant?

MOVIE RATING:


Review by Angeline Chui