A generic teen comedy brimming with patronizing stereotypes and lame in-jokes.
The Perfect Score (2004)
Tomatometer
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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
Obvious, broad and burdened by leaden lines of dialogue that are dropped here and there like demented coconuts.
Grading on the admittedly weak January curve, it squeaks by with a pass.
Succeeds because at its core it is about the very different pressures very different young adults face, and the test that insists on judging them as one and the same.
Despite the serious subject matter, director Brian Robbins can't decide whether this is a drama, a satire or an American Pie-style teen spoof, and the film dissolves into a shapeless, weightless mass.
...references `The Breakfast Club,' and its few good moments echo the spirit of existential, youthful rebellion captured by that 1985 minor classic.
An MTV film that extreme right-wing moralists can be proud of, as it posits a quintessentially American world of racial, intellectual, and sexual conformity.
Frankly, those of us for whom the SAT is a distant memory may not find it in our hearts to be all that sympathetic to a bunch of whiny kids afraid to take a test.
This undercooked high school heist movie is disfigured by flabby dialogue ... unfunny pratfalls and criminally slack pacing.
Flounders about in a flux of narrative indecision and juvenile confusion.
The way the group finally steals the test and how they use it is really, really ridiculous and a complete cop-out.
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