Perfect

My Goodness, what a bomb! We didn't drop anything this big on Iraq!

Perfect is the story of a Rolling Stone reporter (Travolta) who trips over his ethics, or lack there of while writing two big stories. His first story deals with a computer tycoon in hot water with the U.S. government for selling his products to an Eastern-Bloc country. This angle is played way up considering the lack of details we are told about the situation. No matter, the story you will remember deals with a swanky health club in L.A.. Travolta wishes to write a piece about how health clubs in the 1980s are replacing the singles bars of the 1970s as the #1 place for people to meet. Take that premise and see how long you can stretch it. Director Bridges apparently thought he could drag it out for nearly two hours and still keep our attention.

This film suffers from a severe lack of focus. There are too many location changes to count. There is also too much running around and too much time wasted on insignificant little things. For example, what was up with Travolta's sudden trip to Morocco near the end of the film. It had no purpose what so ever! Another problem this film has is its tendency to drag out every scene to last as long as whatever cheesy 80s dance song is playing in the background. That gets old pretty darn quick.

This film is also hopelessly dated in terms of fashion. If any guy came into my health club wearing tights or a fish-net tank top, he'd probably get beaten up. Bridges & CO also try to recycle a gag that worked in Urban Cowboy. In that film, there was a scene featuring numerous women dressed up for a Dolly Parton look-alike contest. In this film, we get about a hundred people dressed up as Boy George in a scene at a hotel. In Urban Cowboy it worked since there was a legitimate reason for all the people to dress that way. They were at least trying to win a contest. The scene in Perfect is useless and it only serves to date the film even further.

This film was by no means Travolta's worst. Has anyone seen The Experts or Shout? This film did, however, have his most embarrassing scene. In it, he's sweating away in Jamie Lee Curtis's aerobics class and doing a never-ending series of pelvic thrusts to the dance beat. His crotch has obviously been stuffed with a sock, or perhaps the thing Hammer used in his Pumps in a Bump video. Truly hilarious!

Travolta is a talented actor, but he has nothing to work with here. Jamie Lee Curtis is also a great talent, but she is wasted as well. She looks absolutely gorgeous, but her character is so moody and abrasive that we can hardly stand her. The supporting cast of mostly unknowns fills out their respective stereotypical roles as well as they can.

In all, this is a poor film on all levels. It tries to be an insightful look at journalistic ethics and falls flat on its face. It comes off as being little more than a two hour plug for Rolling Stone Magazine. Too Bad.

3 of 10 stars

So sayeth the Hound.

PERFECT reminds you of precisely what you wanted to forget about the mid-80s, including the movie, itself. That's why so many are uncomfortable with it, myself included.

Yes, Jamie Lee looks lovely (though she'd go on to look much better -- and much healthier -- in subsequent films), and it's fun to grin along with Travolta and the Tent in His Shorts in that entirely-too-long "hot aerobics moves" sequence.. But PERFECT is useful for one thing and one thing only, being an send up of East coast pretentiousness and presumptions about the "Los Angeles"/airhead image. Oh yes, and it's probably the only film on earth to mention the ABSCAM scandal of 1980. Give it two stars for that, alone.

There's a not-so-subtle gay undercurrent running through PERFECT be it the impromptu Boy George Fandom conference at the hotel, the pretty blonde fruits prancing around Sport Connection and incredulous "Chippendale (i.e. homosexual) boyfriend" of the aggressively heterosexual Sally; or the purposely genderless introduction of Jessie's "swim coach" rumor. Be honest: you wait with bated breath until the movie provides you with the sigh of relief that the swim coach was indeed male. It could have been worse: all that memory trauma could have been over an allegation of...lecherous PE teacher LESBIANISM...(gasp, the horror!)

Before you tell me I'm imposing today's standards on yesterday's film, consider that these were pertinent issues, particularly for gays and gays-to-be, even (perhaps even "especially") in 1985.

But I found myself actually agreeing with the central message of the film, as articulated by that hokey Travolta analogy on pop culture and individual dreams.

Diagnosis: if PERFECT is any indicator, the "California"/LA image is the fantastic, mass-marketed product of the very people claiming to critique it from such an "objective" distance. Whatever it's funny-ha-ha flaws, anyone over age 35 is acutely aware that we're really only laughing at ourselves, our active denial of blatant, obvious 1980s in your fact homosexuality; our long-spent cans of sparkly rouge, styling mousse, and L'Oreal; synth bass and gated snare dance lines, the wrong-then-and-wrong-now spandex, and pushbutton on-screen/zero-chemistry heterosexual promiscuity.

PERFECT is the warped mirror back in our face. That is precisely WHY it was such a monumental failure at the BO. Two stars for that part, too.

While promoting "Pulp Fiction" back in the 1990's Tarantino while explaining his casting of John Travolta in what would be one of his most iconic roles, resurrecting his career and taking to a new status, the writer and director didn't mention "Grease" or "Saturday Night Fever" as why he thought Travolta was a good actor. He quoted loving him in movies such as "Blow Out", "Carrie" and this little gem called "Perfect". Such opinions are quite surprising since most of those films (except "Carrie") weren't box-office hits neither well criticized, some gaining cult status in the following years of its release. However, even with Quentin's approval "Perfect" still finds a great deal of unexplainable resistance among film buffs, currently giving to this one of the most absurd low ratings ever given to a quite decent movie.

A short way to explain the story is thinking of an "Absence of Malice" made for the masses: it deals with ethics in journalism with Travolta playing a biased Rolling Stone reporter while unsatisfied with the running of a controversial article involving political officials dealing with corruption charges, decides to write a new and apparently harmless article on health clubs and their new function as being a cool dating place replacing the decadent singles bars. Yeah, why bothering going in places where everybody is so down when you go to a happier place, make lots of exercise and meet guys and girls with perfect bodies? There's something worth writing he thinks. Working as an obstacle to this story is a gym instructor (played by Jamie Lee Curtis) who doesn't trust reporters after a career damaging event when a reporter distorted facts while publishing a story involving her. While Travolta's story goes under false pretensions (with a bit of truth in it as well), he can't escape resisting some affection he has by the main character of his article, who each day goes by starts to like this guy, believing he's about to write a good report on the gym and its attendees.

The stone in the way of this movie is that its lack of seriousness while the events are being unfolded, often deeply concerned about the romance between the main characters. At times you think something really dangerous is about to happen, he's being followed by someone due to the other inflammable article where Travolta is torn in between telling about what his source said to him on an exclusive interview or go to jail to protect his source, but no, the film doesn't take off much from this scenario except towards its conclusion to be used as a closure to the gym instructor situation, a predictable and not very believable device.

But "Perfect" manages to keep you hold to your seat due to the reliable and impressive performances of Curtis, Travolta, Laraine Newman, Marilu Henner and small appearances from Kenneth Welsh and David Paymer. It drags down a bit when it stays for too long in the work out exercises, fun for the actors jumping up and down to the coolest and energic 1980's soundtrack but tiring for us viewers seeing an unimaginative lack of camera angles and poor editing which shifts from two different angles instead of being more acrobatic.

Story delivered some valid points (although it can look ridiculously dated now since gym's are also definitely places for dating and no one questions those things anymore), might not be perfect (no pun intended), it was well balanced and easy to follow and feel interested. So, why viewers think this is one of the worst movies ever? Makes me wonder what some of you are watching these days. There's plenty of quality in "Perfect", you just need to open your eyes to see it. 9/10

Adam Lawrence (John Travolta) is a relentless, cynical Rolling Stone reporter from New York. He is in Los Angeles to track down an elusive interview. He has a second idea to write about fitness clubs as the new singles bars. He tries to interview instructor Jessie Wilson (Jamie Lee Curtis) known as the "aerobics pied piper" at The Sport Connection. She refuses due to a previous reporter who wrote that she had an affair with her swim coach. He interviews customers like Sally (Marilu Henner) and Linda (Laraine Newman) who is described by another as "the most used piece of equipment in the gym". He is being pressured to testify about his other interview and hand over his notes. When Adam hands in a sincere story about health clubs, the editor rewrites it as a take down piece digging up the old story about Jessie.

This movie is hopelessly dated. It was probably dated and cheesy even at the time of its release. The aerobics scenes are too extended. They feel like cheesy music videos. I actually don't mind the story. Travolta and Curtis are fine actors. The movie is sincere in the writing. However, it can never truly escape the cheese factor.

OK, I know this is a bad, bad movie. It's not like I have any "diamond in the rough" illusions about this actually being a good movie that's merely misunderstood. So why is it that I watch it every time it's on? I honestly love watching this film!

Maybe it's the dated 80s setting and the "studly" guys that look utterly homosexual now. Perhaps it's the great lines, like Anne De Salvo looking directly into the camera and saying, "C'mon, guys, make me suffer," or Matthew Reed (in his one and only screen role) saying, "It was love at first sight. I took one look at those tits and my whole body got hard!" It could be John Travolta going through his aerobics routine with a sock in his jock, or Larraine Newman straddling the leg-spreader, proving that not every woman looks sexy in a leotard.

Of course there's Jamie Lee Curtis calling Travolta a "sphincter muscle" three different times. There's also Jann Wenner gyrating his fat gut during the closing credits. How about the pointless scene where hundreds of Boy George fans storm the hotel, or Curtis "deleting" Travolta's article by merely backspacing (What kind of word processor is that)? There's even the premise that Rolling Stone is a serious news magazine - HAW HAW HAW!

I seriously can't recommend paying money for this, but it's worth a watch if it comes on a local channel just for the sheer badness of it all. This is the definitive nadir of Travolta's career (check that...it is better than Battlefield Earth, but what isn't?) After this, even Look Who's Talking Now looks brilliant.