Image courtesy of www.impawards.com
Director :
Mark Rosman
Cast :
Hilary Duff …. Holly Hamilton
Heather Locklear …. Jean Hamilton
Aria Wallace …. Zoe Hamilton
Chris Noth …. Uncle Ben
Hilary Duff has one thing going for her that no other teenage actress of her generation does: she has a screen presence that can’t be matched. Having gone from television to movies, Duff has turned a role on a Disney Channel staple Lizzie McGuire into a successful music career and modest box office success aiming at primarily pre-teen girls. While aiming at this demographic generally doesn’t allow for much outside of generic formulas and retreads of old standards. A Cinderella Story to Raise your voice both had modest box office success to go with their cliché plots and characters.
You can’t blame her for sticking to what works; part of the genre’s charm is that a happy ending is guaranteed and that the message will never be controversial or too adult-themed for its’ intended audience. She’s safe and innocent; when her only controversy is a spat involving another innocent teenage star (Lindsey Lohan) over another non-threatening teenage star (Aaron Carter), chances are her days of being a wholesome All-American teenaged star are still plentiful. The Perfect Man is another in a line of cliché ridden, formulaic teen movies Duff has made since leaving the small screen, but this one is perhaps her worst work to date.
Duff stars Holly Hamilton a teen tired of moving every time her mom (Heather Locklear as Jean Hamtilon) has another personal crisis involving a man clearly unworthy of her affections. To this end, Holly invents a secret admirer who knows how to push her mother’s buttons. This creation is meant by Holly to boost her mother’s self esteem and get her to choose a much better kind of man than the losers she’s been bringing home.
Problems arise, however, when this pseudo-relationship takes off. Holly now was to produce this mystery suitor, so she does what any sane, rational teenager who’s duped her mother into falling for a stranger through words and gestures: borrow her friend’s charming and handsome uncle (Chris Noth).
Holly is now on a mission against time and in a race that is completely conventional and utterly predictable as now Holly has to keep up her ruse, all the while the man she wants her mother to be with could be potentially missed because of this deception.
That’s not to say there isn’t anything positive about the movie. While Duff is her usual persona as the angst-ridden teenager, Locklear is surprisingly solid in her role as Jean Hamilton. Locklear, primarily a television actor, brings a real sense of charisma and genuine warmth to her role that is difficult to do given the material she is working with. Noth, best known for his work on Sex and the City and Law & Order, brings a certain sense of life to his relatively limited role. Neither have much to work with, as the comedic aspects and dialogue are some of the worst of this year
The movie’s problems begin with the very concept behind it; the movie’s plot revolves an ever-escalating series of gags and ruses that aren’t clever, original or amusing.
The dialogue is just as bad as the comedic aspects. What could have been a much more heart-warming story is turned into comedic moments. Some scenes that are designed for drama or heartfelt moments are so poorly written for Locklear and Duff that it is a situation where it is so bad that its’ hilarious. The cast tries to make the material work but it is just so horrid that even the best of intentions can save many scenes in the movie. But when the dialogue isn’t disrupting the movie, the pacing is.
The storyline moves too quickly for the sort of broad material to work with. While The Perfect Man barely clocks over 100 minutes in actual running length the movie’s plot is rushed to an absurd degree. The movie keeps moving, not stopping for any serious character development or the matter any at all, and doesn’t seem to keep on track. That would matter if the movie ever got on track in the first place. From the opening scene and beyond, Duff and crew are seemingly trapped by perhaps the worst story of 2005.
The story behind The Perfect Man just carries the film into a nether region from which it can’t escape. In order to effectively pull this ruse, the sorts of tactics that are used by Holly become too unbelievable. There comes a point early on where it becomes unbelievable to the point of absurdity and just keeps going to the point where its’ unintentionally funny.
