The Perfect Man

Teenager Holly (Duff) is fed up with having to move house/city/state every time her mother Jean (Locklear) splits up with yet another man. And so Holly devises a plan: she'll invent the perfect man for her mother, an imaginary secret admirer who showers Jean with gifts, notes and sundry tokens of his affection. Unfortunately the inevitable happens, and when Jean eventually decides she's ready to meet her on-line beau, Holly 'borrows' her friend's handsome uncle, Ben (Noth), and engages in ever more desperate measures to persuade her mother the romance is real. A squeaky-clean romantic comedy that hangs on the highly unlikely premise that Heather Locklear can't get herself a decent date, The Perfect Man aims for deep emotional resonance and winds up being risibly, unintentionally hilarious. Conceived as a showcase for Hilary Duff's talents, it succeeds only in confirming that repeatedly acting the naive, disingenuous schoolgirl is an exercise in diminishing returns. With a little imagination, the basic story could have been rewritten as a dark, Heathers-style comedy in which a teenage daughter sets out to deliberately cause her mother to suffer a nervous breakdown; as it stands, however, this plot is riddled with more holes than a suicidal colander.