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© Carolyn Arends 2005, subject to licensing agreement with Christianity Today International. All rights reserved. Click for reprint information.

Critics are raising their voices in protest of Hilary Duff's latest comedy, The Perfect Man, in which she plays a teenager who conspires to find an ideal match for her mother (Heather Locklear).

The story is driven by a familiar premise, one that has shown up in two other recent films: one of the central characters tries to encourage a family member by inventing a fictional pen pal and composing letters from that imaginary character. Eventually, when the recipient gets too curious, the writer scrambles to conceal the truth, sometimes finding an "actor" to impersonate the writer. In Dear Frankie, a wonderfully endearing comedy, the letters come from a young boy's mother who is trying to cover up for the fact that the boy's real father is a monster. In the critically acclaimed Since Otar Left, a young woman mourning the death of her uncle is persuaded by her mother to impersonate the dead man through letters to her grandmother, trying to protect the old woman from the heartbreak of her son's untimely death.

In The Perfect Man, Holly pens letters to her mother that are supposedly from a secret admirer, and ends up having to find someone to "play the part" of the mysterious correspondent (Chris Noth). This time, the reviewers are not so impressed.

David DiCerto (Catholic News Service) says, "In the hands of a more accomplished writer and director, The Perfect Man could have been a much more textured—and entertaining—mother-daughter movie. But as it is, the film's anemic, cliché-riddled script has only Duff's buoyant charm to keep it afloat."

Lacy Mical Callahan (Christian Spotlight) calls the film "flatly forgettable. It will play well with Hilary Duff's 'tween fan base, and makes for a mildly entertaining 'girls night out' show … if nothing else is playing."

Greg Wright (Hollywood Jesus) says, "It's just too bad that the characters … aside from Holly, never seem to feel (or think about) anything very deeply. In the Perfect Movie, the lesson might have been more convincing."

Michael Elliott (Movie Parables) calls it an "insipid by-the-numbers story," and concludes, "If the tracks are laid improperly, it doesn't matter how fast you drive the engine. There's no avoiding the train wreck."

Did anybody like this movie? Christopher Lyon (Plugged In) seems impressed, saying director Mark Rosman "hits all the right emotional notes to draw daughters and moms into the relationships between the characters. The strength of those relationships and the movie's relative wholesomeness helps to distract from weaknesses in the plot and the fact that so much of the film involves watching people type e-mails to each other. It's the eventual honesty and growth between mom and daughter that's most encouraging."

Michael Smith (Hollywood Jesus) blogs that it's "a fun frolic of a movie. … No pressure to discover a sinister or complicated plot. Just a couple of knockout beautiful women figuring life out through self- and other-inflicted hard knocks."

Mainstream critics, meanwhile, are rating this as one of the year's worst films.

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