The Perfect Man

Yes, in this movie, Heather Locklear has trouble meeting men.

Actually, it’s not that hard to believe that most men would be intimidated by a woman as good-looking as Heather Locklear and have difficulty summing up the courage to talk to her. Her character, Jean Hamilton, is approached by all sorts of weirdos and guys who are misguided in their confidence—this is to be expected, but what is difficult for me to accept is that Jean would actually give most of these doofus dudes the time of day no matter how desperate she is.

So, Jean (Heather Locklear) is a divorced single mother who is so frightened of ending up alone forever that she hooks up with the first guy who looks her way regardless of whether he is right for her or not. Every time the relationship inevitably fails, she packs up and moves across the country with her two daughters, Holly (Hilary Duff) and Zoe (no purpose whatsoever). The movie starts with such a breakup, so the family moves to Brooklyn to start a new life/relationship. At this point in her teenage life, Holly has grown decidedly tired of moving every few months, so she hatches a cleverly thought-out and ingenious plan to set her mother up with an imaginary man. Seemingly under the impression that her mother is still 6 years old and able to sustain such chimerical friendships, Holly puts this masterful plan into action by sending her mother flowers and writing her love letters signed by a secret—and I can’t stress this enough—imaginary admirer. This fake relationship has the desired result of preventing her mother from moving again, with only the slightly bothersome side-effect of completely decimating her mother’s heart once she realizes that Johnny-Perfect-Man does not exist. But, you know, Holly just wants to make her mom happy and stuff.

So this harebrained scheme of Holly’s results in all sorts of would-be comedic moments. Holly tries to leave her mother an orchid at the front door, but is repeatedly unsuccessful in getting her mom’s attention with the buzzer. She then has to climb in and out of her bedroom window to simultaneously buzz the front door and prevent a random homeless man from stealing the flower. Ha ha, it’s funny because it’s just so typical. Later on in the movie she tries to create a diversion in order to prevent her mother from meeting the actual guy on whom Johnny-Perfect-Man is based, so she reasonably decides that the best way to do this would be to set off the sprinklers at a high-end restaurant. Genius! Not to mention, freakin’ hilarious!

It was pointed out to me by a most clever reader that Hilary Duff is always given the opportunity to do one of her famous clumsy tripping scenes, and this movie is no exception. Not only does she trip and fall through the window as she’s trying to give her mother an orchid, but she also runs into one of the many reliable dog-walkers on the streets of New York, who are always there when a hasty character needs to get tangled up in twenty leashes. Because oh my god, what if she doesn’t make it in time!!

Not surprisingly, I found this movie to be rather asinine and only mildly entertaining. All the characters are veritable fountains of wisdom, spewing forth such life lessons as, “we all make mistakes,” and “new people are only new the first day.” Yet for all their supposed wisdom, the characters make the most idiotic decisions. I wasn’t in complete misery while watching this movie, but I certainly don’t recommend that you spend precious time and money seeing The Perfect Man. There are far better movies out this summer in which you can waste those commodities.