Produced by Marc Platt, Dawn Wolfman, Susan Duff Cast: Hilary Duff, Heather Locklear, Chris Roth, Mike O’Malley, Ben Feldman, Vanessa Lengies, Kym Whitley, Carson Kressley. More like ‘Perfect Generic Stodge’, this facile movie gives the term ‘chick flick’ a bad name. The wafer-thin characters are only a tad more unbelievable than the predictable plot, which swims in a shallow syrupy sentimentality of pop psychology and implausible tack-on solutions supposed to fix the mess the characters create for themselves. I suppose somewhere out there an audience for this exists, and if she can pull her head out of comic book teen romances long enough she might see the movie before it drifts into the oblivion it deserves. Single mom Jean Hamilton (Heather Locklear) has a singularly bad choice in men. She’s just finished icing a cake when the latest jerk dumps her and we know as soon as the doorbell rings that the cake is going to end up in the guy’s face. Inevitably when this happens (the jerk, not the cake - it appears to be every few weeks) she feels the overwhelmingly selfish urge to run, moving herself and her two daughters to yet another city. 16 year-old Holly (Hilary Duff) has never stayed at a school long enough to go to a school dance and seven year-old Zoë (Aria Wallace) has never been able to commit to entering a spelling bee for fear of not being there when the date arrives. Arriving in Brooklyn at yet another temporary bolt hole, Holly miraculously finds an instant best friend at school to moan to about her mother and Jean miraculously finds a job where people know her and respect her skill as a baker (when in her itinerant past has she had time to establish all this?). Jean’s new boss Dolores (Kym Whitley) points out that when it comes to men Jean can never see their flaws and when it comes to herself all she can see are flaws. OK. By now we know exactly what the movie will be about and how it will end. All this has enough true-sounding basic elements for a decent premise – it’s the treatment given it in this movie that makes it plastic and ultimately boring. Holly tells her new friend Amy (Vanessa Lengies) she’s sick of seeing her mom unhappy. She should have been listening in class when the teacher asked what was meant by the lines, “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive”. Instead, she decides to invent the ‘perfect man’ who will woo her mother with flowers, send her romantic letters and emails and somehow this hare-brained scheme is supposed to make her mom happy. I guess the role model her mom has given her in running away when things get problematic has made her daughter less than able to see the consequences of her actions – but both Amy and Adam (Ben Feldman), the young heart-throb at school who develops a thing for Holly, go along with the deception for reasons unknown. The implausible hinge for the plot is that Amy’s uncle Ben (Chris Roth) really is the perfect man for Jean, and it is his advice about what the perfect man would do to woo Jean (as described in an anonymous way by Holly) that drives Holly’s actions once she has decided on her plan. Unfortunately it appears that Ben is about to marry Amber, someone really wrong for him. And there’s Lenny (Mike O’Malley), a crass guy at Jean’s bakery who wears his heart on his sleeve for her and seems to be the next in line for the ‘unsuitable beau’ hat. There are some clever devices with the anonymous intimacy of email and Instant Messaging. Holly pretends to be Ben messaging Jean, but it’s really Holly who discovers her mom’s deeper values, and later Jean returns the favour with Adam, who is unaware who he is really talking to and makes her face some unpleasant truths. The deception gets more complicated, and the movie gets as close as it can to actually touching us, while the comedy falters. The movie then descends into ludicrous cover-ups, banality and implausible resolutions. I guess they must have read “How to repair self-esteem, be a good mom/daughter and stay to face your fears” in Cosmo. Locklear gives an almost authentic performance though the comedy’s too sentimental and the drama’s too light to support her characterisation. Hilary Duff is far too much the generic teen-in-a-romantic-comedy. Chris Roth plays it thankfully straight and has some nice moments with a comically campy Carson Kressley from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. It’s not enough to recommend it. © Avril Carruthers 3rd July 2005
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