The Perfect Man Review
by samseescinema (sammeriam AT comcast DOT net)June 18th, 2005
The Perfect Man
reviewed by Sam Osborn of www.samseescinema.com
rating: 3 out of 4
Director: Mark Rosman
Cast: Hilary Diff, Heather Locklear, Chris Noth
Screenplay: Gina Wendkos
MPAA Classification: PG (some mildly suggestive content)
What a pleasant surprise. After hearing all the negative pre-screener gossip about this film, I expected little more than a bad "Lizzie Maguire" knock-off. Instead, The Perfect Man is a delightful little film about a teenager at odds with her mother's date and move lifestyle. And although the film does exactly what we expect it to, it doesn't try anything stupid along the way. It does what it comes to do and does it well. The actors and screenplay make the characters likeable enough to allow The Perfect Man to blossom into a quiet little hit.
It opens in sparse Wichita, Kansas, where Holly (Hilary Duff) is trying on her new dress for the school dance. "I've been to million schools, but zero dances," she says, looking at herself quizzically in the mirror. Holly's mother, Jean Hamilton (Heather Locklear), accidentally had Holly sixteen years earlier and has been serially single ever since, moving from town to town after each failed relationship. And as Holly finally gets excited about her dress, her mother walks in the door and annonces new plans for a move to Brooklyn. Days after moving, Holly's mother is hit on by a Styx-loving loser named Lenny (Mike O'Mally). Classy as she is, she's also desperate and accepts a date to the Styx concert that weekend. Dispirited by her mother's desperate loneliness, Holly hatches a plan to create the perfect man for her mother. Utilizing her best friend's uncle, Ben (Chris Noth), whom she eavesdropped giving advice to a friend on lady problems over the phone, Holly researches what Ben does to make a woman tick. Bringing this knowledge to life, Holly builds all Ben's experience into a pretend secret admirer for her mother. First giving Orchids to her mother from the said "secret admirer" and then moving on to a word play love letter complete with mix CD. Problem is, Holly's mother begins to fall in love with this pretend secret admirer and soon Holly finds herself dug in too deep.
If anyone's seen a Hilary Duff film, you know where this is going. But as all formula films go, it's not the story that's the fun, it's the way it's told. Here, the beauty of the telling comes from The Perfect Man's characters. Duff's character, Holly, is interesting in that she struggles to find a life for herself between living one for her mother as the secret admirer. This makes Holly's story almost a bildungsroman, a coming-of-age story held within the formula guidelines. Hilary Duff does ok with the role, giving it the likeable charm she gives to all her characters. But sometimes the dialogue throws some real clankers her way, putting a wrench in her acting style. These clunky lines however, are mostly used to exude the message to the younger audiences who may not pick up the more subtle hints. Heather Locklear also does well in her role as the single mother whose strength is snipped by a string of poor relationships. But Chris Noth in particular, playing the uncle, really shines as the suave dad who knows the ins and outs of a successful chase for the opposite sex. Best known for his role in "Sex and the City" as Big (John), Noth tones his style down here to fit perfectly into the forgiving dad role. Also interesting is Holly's love diversion, who's a surprisingly quirky comic book enthusiast. I like the role because it doesn't make him into a typical comic book nerd. His character is written to be funny and oddly cool, not lonely and homely with bulletproof-lensed glasses. It's one of the unique steps The Perfect Man takes to cause it to stand apart, if just for a little bit, from the rest of the pre-teen film crowd.
Message is always a key element to this genre of films. Most take the path of "be yourself," which don't get me wrong, is a fine message. But it's blatantly overused. The Perfect Man forgoes this cliché and goes with another, equally useful message: don't settle. What's nice is that the message fits with the rest of the film and applies to each relationship the mother and the daughter deal with. Sometimes messages are an afterthought added to make parents happy, even though the entire rest of the film has nothing to do with it. Here, the message fits and is finally something new and important for the pre-teen crowd to be aware of.
The Perfect Man is simple, quaint and cute, something rarely seen in pre-teen dramas these days. It doesn't revel in fart jokes or bitchy high school drama and holds itself together nicely, remembering to keep each character's story moving. The Perfect Man tells the story it comes to tell and does it nicely. There's nothing in it that'll blow your socks off, but it'll leave you with a smile on your face.
Copyright (c)2005 Sam Osborn. All rights reserved. www.samseescinema.com
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
