Perfect stars Jamie Lee Curtis (Halloween, Prom Night, Terror Train, The Fog, Halloween II, Road Games, Trading Places, Love Letters, Grandview, USA) in the title role as an exercise club instructor. Co-starring are Marilu Henner (Hammet, Between the Lines) as a member of the exercise club, and whiny John Travolta (Moment by Moment, Two of a Kind) as a magazine reporter who interviews and then beds Curtis.
As its advertisements imply, the film largely concerns Curtis' day-to- day doings at the exercise club and her tempestuous affair with Travolta. Unfortunately, the viewer is sorely disappointed at how seldom and how little he sees Curtis -- too often the movie promises to let Curtus really show her stuff, only to stray into extraneous side- plots about Travolta's work
For example, in one scene Curtis gives in to Travolta's advances and they repair to the bedroom to start removing one anothers' clothing. The viewer is vaguely disturbed that the camera remains demurely outside the bedroom, but he remembers that this is an R-rated movie about the '80's singles scene. Then, just as Travolta starts passionately caressing Curtis' ample breasts, the phone rings and Travolta leaves to follow a "hot" lead on a story. In the entire scene the viewer sees only the beginnings of Curtis' cleavage, less than he saw in even the dullest films from her Horror Phase.
In a later scene, when Curtis and ravolta finally consummate their relationship, the camera at least has a full view of their bed, but the covers are drawn over the couple's writhing bodies. And just as the going starts to get good, the scene abruptly shifts to a pseudo-musical number where Travolta participates in one of Curtis' aerobics classes. The viewer certainly enjoys watching Curtis' long, lean body undulate suggestively, but the sudden switch from the bedroom scene still amounts to a giant ripoff.
What's more, the aerobics scenes (there are several in the film) are the most upsetting of the entire film. In these scenes Curtis prances and struts around the exercise room, glowing with health, youth, and beauty. The exercise mirrors lovingly relfect the fantastic Amazon's every leap and thrust a thousand times. Her lionine face breaks into a terrific, winning grin as she basks in a world from which she can demand anything. Curtis' wide green eyes look right through the camera's lense, right through the the celluloid and the giant silver sheet on the wall, directly into the viewer's own eyes, and promise "this can all be yours."
But of course it is all a lie. If the viewer reaches out to take what those beckoning eyes speak of, he will touch a flat, cold movie screen -- the promise will turn into nothing more substantial than dancing colors on the back of his hand. Just as the soundstage lights cannot penetrate Curtis' leotards, the viewer can never enter Curtis' world of eternal pleasure. The viewer realizes that when the movie is over, he must return to his stark software lab or his tiny, empty apartment. And the viewer knows that even if his and Curtis' paths should cross, she would never give a second glance to a squat, pimply-faced computer nerd. No, the viewer must be a tall, adonis-like star of late night variety shows to get a piece of Jamie Lee's pie.
But why, the viewer asks himself, does Curtis make such a cruel tease of a motion picture? Why is the most he sees of her a two-second glimpse of her shrugging into a T shirt? After Trading Places, Grandview, USA, and especially Love Letters, the viewer knows that Curtis is no prude. It can only be that, in an enviornment of total gratification, the only pleasure left her is the cold, Orwellian thrill of stepping on the helpless. Clearly, this movie is a smorgasbord to be shown to the starving, a clear mountain brook to taunt the thirsty, an unsigned check to be given to the poor. Perfect is not only very bad, it is evil.
Copyright © 1985,1996 by Kelvin Thompson
All Rights Reserved
(Updated July 20, 1996)