FILM | The Perfect Man Movie Review.

The Perfect Man, 2005, stars Hilary Duff, Heather Locklear, and Chris Noth. It’s kinda like 10 Things I Hate About You meets The Parent Trap.

Stuff by Duff may be annoying, but Hilary isn’t. Not always, anyway. While The Perfect Man has its pitfalls (an embarrassing dance sequence, for example), unless you’re especially sensitive it shouldn’t make you spew vomit from your eyeballs.

(Hey, Hilary can have that effect on people.)

The perfect plot?

Holly Hamilton (Duff) is a teen with a mother who can’t keep a boyfriend. Heather Locklear is said mother, Jean (for some reason, this name is totally unbelievable to me). Jean is a pastry chef who moves her kids to a new city every time she gets dumped (again, believable!). The kid sister, cute as she is, isn’t particularly significant to the plot. The film begins with this feminine little family of three relocating to NYC after yet another one of Jean’s failed romances.

Enter Ben (Noth), the uncle of one of Holly’s new Brooklyn friends and the inspiration for her scheme to create a fictional “perfect man” for her mother. The hope is that if she can distract mom with a fake romance, Jean will be distracted from hooking up with yet another real-life loser (like the hair-band lovin’ baker who’s been hung up on Jean since the family arrived in Brooklyn), and the family can thus avoid yet another post-heartbreak relocation.

Only … Surprise! Real life Ben is better than Holly’s fiction.

Or is he? Before the movie can get to its inevitable conclusion, Holly must untangle her web of lies and navigate her own would-be romance as well.

Light, family-friendly comedy, as you might expect, ensues.

Like any young adult film about parental romance, The Perfect Man is more than a little cheesy, but it manages to keep from going too far over the top. There are plenty of little jokes to cut the treacle. And despite obvious issues with suspending one’s disbelief, the plot is not so tired as to render it pointless. There’s also an amusing concert scene featuring the Styx song Mr. Roboto.

How could it not be just a little bit funny?

The Perfect Man opens in theatres today.

A version of this A Perfect Man movie review was published in Dose, June 17, 2005, and appears below. More reviews are here.

Published in Dose, June 17, 2005.