The Perfect Score (2004)

Don't Believe the Hype

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The Perfect Score is a teen heist film starring Erika Christensen, Chris Evans, Bryan Greenberg, Scarlett Johansson, Darius Miles, and Leonardo Nam.It focuses on a group of six high school students whose futures will be jeopardized if they fail the upcoming SAT exam. It was directed by Brian Robbins.The film deals with the themes of one's future, morality, individuality, and feelings.Kyle wants to be an architect, but his scores are too low to get into the school of his choice. Matty is heartbroken when he is rejected from the school to which his girlfriend goes. Good girl Anna is pressured by her parents to excel in academics and remain innocent. Desmond is a basketball player who believes the SAT exam is racist. Rounding out the group is gutsy Francesca and lonely Roy. They conspire together to break into the ETS building and steal the answers to the exam, so they can all get perfect scores.This film falls flat.It is neither funny nor suspenseful.This teen heist flick also fails to explore its potentially socially relevant premise.Too bad that this film was even ever made.The presence of Scarlett Johansson is the only reason why this does not deserve the lowest IMDb rating.

The Perfect Score is a teenage heist film about a group of students who plot to break into the SAT headquarters to steal the answers of the test so they can all pass and continue on with their merry way. Their reason? They believe since the SAT creators don't play fair, they don't have to either.The students in the film make excellent points about standardized testing. One of the boys claims that they tell you from day one in school to be unique, but then they give you the same test, treating you all as the same students. Grades and GPA's don't matter come time for the ACT and SAT. You can be the best in your grade, and average student, or the class idiot and you'll get the same test.Irony stems from that, and the fact that you're being tested on all the things you'll most likely learn in College. Not to mention, the teachers and the school get money and more funding if they find out your school has the best test scores. It's a grade that defines you, and all also profits the school.Director Brian Robbins directed many early Nickelodeon shows such as All That, and one of my all time favorites, Kenan & Kel. He even was the man behind the camera in Good Burger, a childhood favorite of mine. He has his name on a lot of things I like, but if only The Perfect Score could add to that list.The story focuses on teens of all different stereotypes (the sports player, the outsider, the average kid, the below average kid, the good girl, and the stoner) who want to overthrow the system and sneak into the SAT headquarters, print the answers to the test, do well, and move on with their lives. They're heist becomes a lot more difficult when they realize they will have to fill out the answers one by one on the spot while trying to avoid getting caught. But in the end, they wind up learning something more about themselves and each other.It's a cute story, and it has certain ambition and appeal. But the characters never morph past their stereotypes like a film like this would suggest. One of the characters mentions The Breakfast Club, so now I feel obligated to compare it to that. In The Breakfast Club, the characters started out as stereotypes, but along the way, showed that they were more sincere than reality had made them out to be. It shows that the five kids in detention aren't as shallow as they seem.In The Perfect Score, the characters seem like they'll make progress and morph into better people, but it simply never happens. Everyone's likable, everyone's young and vibrant, but the overall effect is underwhelming at best. Not to say some scenes aren't enjoyable or some characters are poorly written, but the storyline is sketchy, believability is slim, and the optimism turns into dead dreams. It's one of those teen films where after you watched it, you feel like you watched it. Not like you lived or relived it.Starring: Erika Christensen, Chris Evans, Bryan Greenberg, Scarlett Johansson, Darius Miles, and Leonardo Nam. Directed by: Brian Robbins.

"The Perfect Score" is like your typical high school movie. When things get tough (the SATs), the not-so-tough turn to crime (stealing the SATs). These students are able to justify their crime with their morally-weak minds. That at least is like high school I know, self-important students are able to justify anything if it's something they want.They tried to present us with both plot and characters. These are characters we've all seen many times before, including such classics as the sports star, the over-achiever, the stoner, and the better-than-thou rebel. They are all painfully, predictably cliché. The plot is why they get at least a few stars but not many.Where "The Perfect Score" falters the most, is with the 'hooks' MTV tried to give it: it's narrated by the stoner, and everyone speaks with only swear words. Stoners of course typically speak slower than an average person which just make all the predictable things he's going to say and the inevitable events happen even slower. The exaggerated use of swear words I'm assuming is just to give the movie an edge. Just remember that this is produced by MTV, that should be all I have to say.

I think this is actually the worst film I've ever seen. This is mainly because it doesn't even fall into the "so bad that it's good" category: it manages to be absolutely awful without being entertaining. The diversity in the main characters just looks forced, and the moral message at the end is so obvious, so trite and so predictable that I wanted to beat my head against the wall.The only reason I even continued watching to the end is that I was with a group of friends. Had it just been me, I'd have stopped it before the half-way mark.One curiosity about the film, I should add, is that it has a relatively young Scarlett Johansson in it. But even she can't save a film this bad.