Last night I went to a premier showing of the new summer hit The Perfect Man, compliments of Grace Hill Media and Universal Pictures.
The movie is being marketed this way, "Funny, fresh and full of surprises, The Perfect Man is a humorous story of love, longing and leaving and what can happen when good intentions go awry. At the story’s heart is the romantic notion of finding the perfect partner…and on the not-so-romantic flipside is a portrait of a family that’s just dealing with the ups and downs life brings while trying to stay together and stay put—at least, that’s what the story’s protagonist, teenager Holly Hamilton, is hoping for."
While the above description is true of the movie I see the movie as more of a picture about a relationship with a mother and a daughter, than one about trying to find the perfect man. The mother, Jean, played by veteran television actress Heather Locklear, is the perfect example of a woman who has to find her identity in a man. She has one failed relationship after another and rather than deal with her disappointment and search out the reasons why she is failing in these relationships, she chooses to uproot her family and move to another town. This isn’t the best way to parent your children. This gets old for the daughter Holly, played by Hilary Duff, as you see her blog about what it is like to be on the road all the time because her mother continues to run away, dragging her from place to place so that she can’t even get close to someone and even go to a dance.
Not surprisingly, the movie shows how the pattern of leaving to avoid intimacy begins to carry through into the daughter’s way of thinking as she finds herself being cared for by a young man she goes to high school with.
The movie is definitely a 21st century movie in that you see how people try to communicate via the Internet using both email and instant messenger technology. And the teen savy Holly even has her own weblog where she tells the world what is really happening in her life. This will appeal to just about anyone who loves the Internet and has chatted in a chat room at some point.
On the downside, although not stated in clear terms saying, "I’m gay and you have to love me," this movie had a bartender character played by one of the fab five who was the standout flamboyant homosexual in the movie. I’m not sure what the point of having this gay character in the movie was, except to be politically correct, but it did nothing for the storyline. And sadly, the audience I was in really enjoyed the overt homosexual humor and just confirms how much Hollywood has been able to brainwash the public into believing that homosexuality is okay and normal and healthy. Research shows anything but.
However, overall the movie was pretty good. Heather Locklear played a relatively conservative character, which is a stretch from her days on Melrose Place, and she brought some realism to the struggle that single mothers have. There were no inappropriate sexual overtones, unless you include the homosexual ones, and there was not one curse word in the whole movie.
Hilary Duff played her teenage character well, and she did it with integrity and honesty. I appreciated that she ended up coming clean with her lies and that she was ultimately able to help her mother become the adult that she needed to be.
This movie may have played better on television, but if you want to take a younger person to the movie and support Hollywood in their attempts to make a family picture, this would be a good movie to start with. Parents just be aware that you may have to explain the homosexual jokes to younger children who might not get the Village People humor.
