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The Perfect Score (2004)
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Reviews Counted:104
Fresh:17
Rotten:87
Average Rating:3.7/10
Consensus: Neither funny nor suspenseful, this heist / teen flick also fails to explore its potentially socially relevant premise.
Runtime: 1 hr 32 mins
Genre: Comedies
Synopsis: High school senior Kyle (Chris Evans) gets a major shock when he discovers his SAT score isn't good enough to get him into college as an architecture major. A perfectionist, Kyle's resilient nature... High school senior Kyle (Chris Evans) gets a major shock when he discovers his SAT score isn't good enough to get him into college as an architecture major. A perfectionist, Kyle's resilient nature is sparked when he embroils his best friend Matty (Bryan Greenberg) in a madcap scheme to steal the SATs. The boys soon realize the enormity of the task ahead of them, and recruit an eclectic bunch of willing accomplices to help. Among their group are Francesca (Scarlett Johansson), an anti-authoritarian hipster whose father happens to work in the building where the elusive test scores are kept; Anna (Erica Christensen), an overachiever who flunked the test due to nerves; Desmond (Darius Miles), the school's star basketball player who wants to get into a good college; and Ray (Leonardo Nam), a hapless stoner who is only included in the group after overhearing Kyle and Matty planning the robbery in the school bathroom. Determined not to fail, the students overcome their different backgrounds and manage to work together by planning an SAT heist in meticulous detail. As the harebrained scheme becomes a reality, moments of bonding, hilarity, and a few lessons in life ensue, as well as a sly critique of the tests along race and gender lines. [More]
Starring: Erika Christensen, Chris Evans, Bryan Greenberg, Scarlett Johansson
Starring: Erika Christensen, Chris Evans, Bryan Greenberg, Scarlett Johansson, Darius Miles, Leonardo Nam, Tyra Ferrell, Fulvio Cecere, Matthew Lillard, Lorena Gale, Lynda Boyd, Michael Ryan, Robert Clarke, Alfred E. Humphreys
Director: Brian Robbins
Director: Brian Robbins
Screenwriter: Mark Schwahn, Marc Hyman, Jon Zack
Producer: Roger Birnbaum, Jonathan Glickman, Brian Robbins, Mike Tollin
Composer: John Murphy
Studio: Paramount Pictures
Reviews for The Perfect Score
Rates an L for laziness, as none of the characters is developed beyond the broadest archetype, nor are their motives probed beyond the flimsiest of excuses -- nor is the heist itself more than a mountain of ridiculous improbabilities.
Next time, director Robbins and his screenwriters should spend a few hours inside a real high school rather than re-hashing stock stereotypes from bad '80s movies.
In the fleeting third act, The Perfect Score hints at what could have been. Unfortunately, its improvements arrive too little, too late.
This is the gang that couldn't test straight... What's needed here is not a run-in with ETS, but with Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees.
Talks a pretty good game, but in the end the numbers just don't add up to much.
Is there not something just plain wrong with a movie about cheating on exams that's less fun than taking one?
Kids facing the SAT in real life may appreciate this movie, if only because it'll make them feel so much smarter than these characters. For the rest of us, it flunks.
A dull film with unsympathetic characters brought together by a gimmicky premise that's handled with no imagination and a pristine fraudulence of emotion.
Seems meant for people who never placed higher than 600 on their SATs. For whom, in fact, Einstein is a bagel.
Maybe it's a case of too many cooks, but these archetypes are drawn as thin as the tip on a newly sharpened #2 pencil.
It's a curious (and not very appealing) group of rebels, whose outrage seems to grow mainly from a sense of entitlement.
Surprisingly smart, surprisingly wise, predictably funny and yet unpredictable in general, it punctures stereotypes and taps into 17-year-old angst.
It's not funny, though it tries to be, and it has nothing serious to say about the politics of the SATs, though it purports to.
The abundance of stereotypes is annoying; each character sticks to type and recites dialogue you would expect that type to say.
When the most entertaining thing about a film is the printed press material that mimics the look of the test, you know you're in trouble.
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