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'The Perfect Man': A pleasant, but less than perfect comedy

By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Heather Locklear is so likable she makes "The Perfect Man," a muddled mother-daughter romantic comedy, somehow likable, too. Not lovable like "Freaky Friday" (with Duff's arch-enemy, Lindsay Lohan), not touching like "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants," but not especially painful, either — depending, that is, on how much Hilary Duff you can take at one time.

Universal Studios

'The Perfect Man'

C+

The verdict: It is what it is — a Hilary Duff vehicle that makes for a relatively pleasant mother-daughter outing.

Director: Mark Rosman
Starring: Hilary Duff, Heather Locklear, Chris Noth, Ben Feldman, Mike O'Malley, Aria Wallace, Carson Kressley
Run time: 100 minutes
Release date: June 17, 2005
Rating: PG for some mildly suggestive content.
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Though she's created a cottage industry out of being cute, clunkers like "A Cinderella Story" and "Raise Your Voice" have made her film career the least promising of her media enterprises. "The Perfect Man" isn't the perfect movie to make the transition, but it's so much better than her other stuff, you're almost thankful for it.

Sort of "Mermaids" with blondes — only softer and dumber (insert your own blonde joke here) — the picture casts Locklear as an insecure single mom with two daughters (Duff and little Aria Wallace in Jonathan Lipnicki glasses) and a man problem. Sure ...

OK, it's a movie. Anyway, Locklear is so desperate for a guy, she hooks up with the first loser who comes her way. When he predictably does her wrong, she packs up the family and moves.

This time, it's goodbye Wichita, hello Brooklyn. But when Mom threatens to take up with an oafish co-worker — nice, but not Prince Charming material — Duff creates an imaginary suitor who woos Locklear with flowers, poems and romantic Internet chit-chat. To figure out what the perfect man would say and do, she solicits advice from a friend's single uncle (Chris Noth, moving from Mr. Big to Mr. Perfect), who has no idea he's been enlisted to create a dream lover.

Director Mark Rosman has worked with his teen queen star on her "Lizzie McGuire" series and on "A Cinderella Story," so he knows what he's about: Hilary and more Hilary. However, the script sends one mixed message after another. What are we to feel about a woman who uses a parent-faculty meeting to place a public personals ad for herself as her child cringes, or who, well — how else do you put this? — seems pretty, um, easy. And what about a daughter who, pretending to be the Guy, ends up in a chat room romancing her own mother.

Physically, the two are a mismatch. Duff is round (not fat) and looks like the spawn of a Gabor sister. Locklear is stick-thin, more likely to have given birth to the anorexic Olsen twin.

However, they have a pleasant chemistry, leaping gracefully enough through the film's lumpy who's-the-parent-who's-the-child hoops. And "Queer Eye's" Carson Kressley is surprisingly effective as a fey bartender — kinda like the old Tony Randall role in the Doris Day-Rock Hudson movies, but with the gay subtext front and center.