The Perfect Score
Directed by: Brian Robbins
Starring: Erika Christensen, Chris Evans, Bryan Greenberg, Scarlett Johansson, Darius Miles, Leonardo Nam
Rated: PG-13 (for language, sexual content, and some drug references)
Parental Notes: Although some parents may worry about the central premise of the film – stealing the answers to the SAT – this is an innocuous teen flick. There is some sexual innuendo and a bit of foul language, but nothing overly objectionable for the teen or pre-teen set. Indeed, this might serve as a good springboard for discussion about standardized testing and its fairness.
It’s a tried and true formula: take half a dozen teenagers of varying class status, ethnicity, and GPA and put them in a situation where they learn useful life lessons and become fast friends. These films are a proverbial dime a dozen, provide few, if any, surprises, and pass gently over the audiences’ retinas only to pass equally gently from their memories. For the most part, these are movies only remembered during nostalgiafests in later decades. They’re not meant to change your life, they’re meant to provide a brief escape from it into a world where everything works out for the best and we all end up living happily ever after, after Learning A Lesson.
“The Perfect Score” is a typical teen flick from its first frame to its last. It’s not at all original, although its subject matter (teens banding together to steal the answers to the SAT) and one of the heroes (a stoner with a brain of gold, so to speak) may cause parents to raise their eyebrows. There’s no real reason for concern – the kids Learn Their Lesson, and by way of a bonus the film has a couple of talented performers and plenty of genuinely funny moments.
The premise is simple: a group of teens afraid that they’re going to do poorly on the test band together to steal the answers, insisting that “standardized” testing is unfair to students brought up to be unique. Their reasons for being in on the caper run the gamut from fear of not getting into the perfect school to boredom.
The cast pulls off their roles well, particularly Scarlett Johansson (who seems almost to be slumming it after her brilliant performance in “Lost in Translation”). As bored rich girl Francesca, Johansson manages to come across as simultaneously sophisticated and immature, smoking and talking about how overdone the “poor little rich girl” thing is one moment and falling for the goofy Matty the next.
Leonardo Nam, however, is the humorous glue that holds this film together. His character, Roy, is a stoner with a 0.0 GPA who winds up joining the team almost by accident. Roy turns out to be both the most useful and the most risky member of the group, and Nam gives him a sly humor which is genuinely funny without being eyerollingly stupid more than a couple of times. Nam makes the idea of a stoner intellectual work, and it’s kind of a shame that the shallowness of the typical teen film keeps us from learning more about Roy’s past.
The rest of the cast are good within the limited scope of their cookie-cutter roles. There’s overachieving Anna (Erika Christensen), athlete Desmond (Darius Miles), none-too-bright Matty (Bryan Greenberg), and his buddy Kyle (Chris Evans). These aren’t challenging roles, and the cast do respectable jobs with them. The changes the characters undergo are predictable to anyone who’s seen more than a couple of these mass-produced teen flicks, but in a way they are comforting – it can be pleasant to take an hour and a half away from life and just watch the things you know are going to happen unfold. There are very few surprises in this kind of film, and that’s why it gets made: to entertain without challenging, to amuse without requiring much thought.
“The Perfect Score” is not groundbreaking. It is not original. It includes a moralistic ending which is notable only in that it manages to be funny and mostly in character too. Teenagers will likely find the film entertaining, but parents and anyone who’s seen more than one or two teen movies will find it boring.