Plot: What’s it about?
Jean Hamilton (Heather Locklear) is a woman on a quest, a mission to find the perfect man, no matter what she has to do. She doesn’t want to settle for a nice man, a good man, or even a great man, she is obsessed with finding the perfect man. This search consumes her life, to the point that she will drop her life in one town in order to start over in a new town after a breakup. This might not throw off her own lifestyle, but her children have been moved from town to town, from school to school. This has made it hard on her daughter Holly (Hilary Duff), who is tired of all the moving and being unable to have a stable life of her own. Since the perfect man is so difficult to find, Holly creates him on-line to keep her mother in one place for a while. Holly bases Mr. Perfect off the uncle of a friend, which leads to sticky situations, when her mom almost runs into him in real life. Will the charade last, or will Jean decide to look elsewhere for her perfect man?
This isn’t the kind of movie I would normally look forward to, but The Perfect Man has one element I cannot resist, the incredible Hilary Duff. I mean, I can’t imagine wanting to sit through a mother/daughter bonding film based around a light romantic comedy structure, but with Duff on deck, I had to check it out. I was not let down by the Duff quotient, she has ample screen time and looks gorgeous. As always, she handles the comic elements with ease and she is without question, the best part of this movie. The rest of the movie however, is just plain awful and should never be seen again. The plot is asinine, a woman who moves all over country in search of a perfect man, when she is so neurotic, the perfect man would never want her. The writing is poor, creating situations with no realism whatsoever, not to mention the transparent characters. I don’t expect cerebral perfection from a movie like this, but I do expect some kind of common sense. The Perfect Man is a terrible movie, but if you’re a fan of Duff, then you’ll want to rent to take in the scenery.
Video: How does it look?
The Perfect Man is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen. As this is a new release from Universal, of course it looks terrific and then some. The print is almost pristine, so the visuals have a clean, crisp, and well detailed appearance. In fact, detail is so good at times, the image takes on a much deeper texture, quite impressive work indeed. The movie’s vivid color scheme bounds off the screen, with rich and vibrant hues that never drift into errors. I found contrast to be stark and consistent also, with no problems in the least to mention. So another new release and another excellent visual treatment from Universal, as expected.
Audio: How does it sound?
The audio track here is about what I expected, given that this is a romantic comedy, perhaps the least audio driven of all genres. Although a Dolby Digital 5.1 track is found here, the material is driven by dialogue and low impact audio, so don’t expect a whirlwind of powerful audio elements here. The surrounds are visited to enhance the musical soundtrack, but aside from that, only a handful or so of scenes make use of the rear channels. This seems to satisfy the material however, as it never suffers and the front speakers handle the load rather well. The dialogue is crisp as can be and is never hard to understand, no problems whatsoever. This disc also includes French and Spanish language tracks, as well as subtitles in English, Spanish, and French.
Supplements: What are the extras?
This is the most self indulgent, shallow selection of extras I have ever seen. On the commentary track, the entire session is spent praising the cast and crew, with talk of how fun the shoot was, how close everyone was, and what a genuine pleasure the production was. The same holds true for the featurettes, all of which are wasted with interviews of the stars patting each other on the back. Come on. This movie was so horrible, there was no on screen chemistry, yet everyone was like peas in a pod? Yeah. This disc also includes some deleted scenes and outtakes, if you want to suffer through those.
