The Perfect Man (Widescreen Edition)

Holly Hamilton (Duff) is on a mission to find her single mom (Locklear) a perfect man….Even if she has to make that man up! Without other options, she creates an imaginary secret admirer based on a charming restaurateur (Noth). But this scheme keeps Holly on her toes more than it actually sweeps her mother off her feet. One crazy mishap after another leads the two of them to discover that sometimes what you're looking for is already right in front of you.
One of Hilary Duff's most attractive qualities is that she's not a borderline anorexic like too many Hollywood starlets; she has a warm, full-bodied presence that makes her dangerously glossy prettiness accessible. Similarly, Heather Locklear--who's been an iconic plastic blonde on television for decades--is cultivating a bruised humanity as she matures. These two combine forces in The Perfect Man, a curious teen comedy/adult romance hybrid about a single mother named Jean (Locklear, Melrose Place) whose tactic for getting over a broken heart is to move to a different part of the country, uprooting her two daughters Holly and Zoe (Duff, Cheaper by the Dozen, and newcomer Aria Wallace) in the process. Holly, to keep her mother from falling into another desperate and doomed relationship, uses advice from a schoolfriend's uncle (Chris Noth, Sex and the City) to send Jean flowers and love letters from a secret admirer. Of course, sustaining this fantasy requires some wacky antics, but The Perfect Man balances goofiness with an emotional mother/daughter tug-of-war and has some entertaining supporting actors (including Caroline Rhea, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, and Carson Kressley, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy). The plot, however, has holes so big that it collapses even as it unfolds. --Bret Fetzer