The credits contend “The Perfect Score” was made by the hip peeps over at MTV Films, but the film just as easily could have been scripted by the local PTA. Rife with lessons on good citizenship — teamwork is good, cheating is bad and always listen to your mama — this film about a group of high school students who conspire to steal the answers to the SAT is a morality play that doesn’t play very well at all.
The pacing is terrible, the dialogue feeble and the plot held loosely together by a series of preposterously opportune circumstances: Not only do the kids live in Princeton where the ETS (author of the SAT) is headquartered, but the ETS building is owned by the father of the group’s soi-disant punk rock chick (Scarlett Johansson), who happens to have the keys to the joint. The ultimate deus ex machina occurs midway through the film, when the All-American white boy (Chris Evans) is traipsing through the halls of ETS (he got in … don’t ask) and is handed the master copy of the SAT by an administrator who thinks he’s the copy room guy. The kid winds up inadvertently shredding the document, but you get the point.
The setup goes something like this: Our six protagonists are all required to take the SAT in order to get into college, and all of them — for various reasons — are not up to snuff when it comes to taking standardized tests. Francesca, the punk, is too consumed with dark eye shadow and loathing for her wealthy, philandering father. Kyle is bright, but not bright enough to get into Cornell (and, boy, won’t it break his parents’ hearts if he doesn’t?). Matty (Bryan Greenberg), All-American white boy #2, has his eye on Maryland so he can join a girlfriend who’s clearly over him. Desmond (NBA prodigy Darius Miles) is black, and everyone knows the SAT is racist. Pedantic Anna (Erika Christensen, sleepwalking through the entire picture) is an academic whiz, but repeatedly freezes during the big test. And Roy (Leonardo Nam) is a stoner Asian dude ranked last in the class, even though — can you say “stereotype?” — he’s a math and computer genius.
“The Breakfast Club” this ain’t, though it aspires to be like that and several other far superior films. There is some entertainment value in watching a clearly overmatched Miles try to hold his own against Johansson (what in the hell is she doing in this movie?), and I can’t help but think of what might have been had Darius been allowed to dunk on her... repeatedly.
Here’s a question (get out your #2 pencils): If, as the film’s poster claims, the SAT is hard to take, but even harder to steal, why didn’t these kids just study? That would have saved us all a lot of wasted time. (Rated PG-13 for language, sexual content and some drug references.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 30, 2004. Read the original PDF.