The trailer accurately foreshadows the depth of the theatrical disaster, which fruitlessly struggles to achieve teen flick status. As you can deduce from the countless promos on MTV, "The Perfect Score" follows six teens motivated by diverse factors, who collaborate in an effort to steal the key to the SAT.
MTV Films doesn't even bolster their latest release with a decent soundtrack.
Scarlett Johanssen dons a foot-high headless mask complete with attached bloody shoulders as she crawls across the floor of an office building. She sulks at the second-ranked student in her class, whining that the near-valedictorian is too perfect. She gives a Mariah-Carey look-a-like a peace sign then informs the barely dressed girl she means "p-i-e-c-e".
I was sure by the end of "The Perfect Score" that I had read the credits wrong. Less than a month ago, Johanssen received a Oscar nomination for her work in "Girl with a Pearl Earring," and received raving reviews for "Lost in Translation." Could the same budding Hollywood star be spouting out lines a ninth-grader would reject?
She should have taken Tom Cruise's advice that an actor is made by the roles they do not take rather than the roles they do. Instead, she'll be regretting her contribution to "The Perfect Score" for a while.
Somehow Erika Christensen, who had a stellar performance as Michael Douglas' drug-addicted daughter in "Traffic," also was duped into "The Perfect Score." Unfortunately she comes across even sillier and more tastelessly in her role.
The writing, while failing to dish out creativity, comic appeal or anything resembling action, succeeds in concealing both stars' talent to the point where you could care less about the bumbling teenagers' college aspirations.
The plot evokes sympathy from college-bound adolescents and the actors are hot enough to suffer through another cookie-cutter movie for those who have already endured the SAT trauma.
This justifies watching the first five minutes. After that, the movie quickly races downhill.
For instance, the most breathtaking action scene in the movie occurs when the movie's token pothead drops his cell phone in a muddy puddle. But, alas! He saves it 30 seconds later. Earlier, one teen, covered only by a snorkel mask, almost gets caught by a security camera.
Fittingly, the funniest part of "The Perfect Score" is when the teen puts on the snorkel mask.
The movie seems to be experiencing a 90-minute identity crisis. The characters aren't sexy, funny or dumb enough to encourage "The Perfect Score's" classification in any of the normal genres. Some of the characters are scarily realistic and, consequently, awfully boring. The others are completely over the top, spitting out tediously constructed one-liners that trigger immediate eye-rolling.
And then there's Roy. The writers really hit the jackpot with him. He seems to encompass all the stereotypes left over by the rest of the cast. Mentioned each half hour is Roy's 0.0 GPA caused, the audience is made to think, solely by his heavy pot-smoking and absence of parental figures. Despite his inability to form sentences longer than four words, the Asian genius, Roy, surprises the group with his extensive mathematical grasp of quadratic equations and other "impossible" formulas on the SAT as well as his computer programming expertise. Did I mention he is a serious womanizer constantly fantasizing about hooking up?
By the end of the movie, the characters haven't proven themselves likeable or hittable enough for their happy endings to be in the least bit interesting. Who cares which adolescent brat ends up kissing the other, or which overachiever doesn't get into the Ivy of his choice? I'm just glad I'm not in high school again dealing with the characters' superficial problems resolved by even more superficial means.
"The Perfect Score" ends up producing as much entertainment value as a "Dismissed" episode. And between the movie and one of the greasy singles on the reality show, I'd have to pick the latter.
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