The Perfect Score
Release Date: January 30, 2004
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for language, sexual content and some drug references
Directed by: Brian Robbins
Starring: Erika Christensen, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Darius Miles, Bryan Greenberg, Leonardo Nam, Leonardo Nam, Tyra Ferrell
Plot:
Six high school students band together and develop a plan to steal the answers for the S.A.T. in order to prevent the test from unfairly defining who they'll become. Each student in the group has his or her own set of circumstances that leads to the conclusion that the only way to truly decide one's own fate is to beat the system.
Review:
To label a film "A Teen Flick", it would obviously need a handful of teenagers in the film along with a plot that fits
perfectly with the teens of the reality world. If its something teenagers can relate to then they will indeed enjoy the
flick. A Perfect Score can go half and half in that situation I would have to say.
Here we have a film that involved stealing the answers to the Sat's. Students currently in high school want to go to
certain universities to enhance their careers in. However, as usual these are universities that look for high sat
scores, so they would need to somehow find a way to get a decent score to meet their requirements.
The Perfect Score features some very good points. If certain people analyze it pretty well, you can tell that there
were several messages. One being, obviously to not steal because you will eventually get caught and it will only
get you so far in life. Another was a really good girl, that turns wild and begins to not really listen to her mother
anymore. I can't necessarily say that is good, but enjoy life as it is not too long, just don't get into trouble.
A problem with this film was that it was trying extremely hard to be funny and not actually concentrating on the
issue in hand. They placed an extremely high on drugs Korean looking teenager named Roy in the movie to hit the
teen audience with some laughter. I can assure you that he is funny, but up to a point and it gets old fast. If
Perfect Score would have concentrated on actually developing the plan in a serious mode, we could have had an
interesting movie here, but sometimes its just one or two characters that can ruin a whole feature length film.
Can't go away without mentioning Scarlett Johansson who was in two great films last year, Lost In Translation and
Girl With A Pearl Earring. When you come right down to it, she was not only the best actor from all, but she
brought interest to the lack of story entertainment that the movie had. She lit up this movie and she looked really
nice while doing it. There was just one thing that irritated me, not Scarlett specifically, but what the awful
screenplay made her do.
And that is a Matrix scene. Yes, believe it or not, when they were planning an entrance to the Princeton Testing
Center, there was a scene in which Scarlett played Trinity and did these Matrix moves. That was a big no-no as it
means nothing to anyone anymore.
Flaws galore is what The Perfect Score had, but their was just something about the film that still drew me, I still
had interest even though the acting was awful by half of the cast. I could go ahead and say the fact that this was
an original plan and that the film took its time introducing the characters, it brought a good feeling and an
introduction to what these high-schoolers were preparing themselves for and many can relate to their situations.
Perfect Score is definitely only aimed at the younger audience and the older audience will probably trash this, but
it certainly isn't a bad movie. A Perfect way to describe A Perfect Score is like a young kid that wants to be a
director when he grows up. You know he has the potential, but instead he just sits all day at home and plays
video games.
When we get right down to it, the direction here was fairly good, but the screenplay well lets just say wasn't
thoroughly written out good. This film certainly had potential, I was almost cheering for it to go a certain route, but
instead it decided to be extremely comedic and stupid and ended up a little shy of being a good film.
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