परफेक्ट

Really, "Perfect" is not the tactical warhead everyone seems to be implying. This is not on the same level as 80s catastrophes like "Megaforce", "Grease 2", "Howard the Duck", or (heaven help us) "Staying Alive". "Perfect" is nothing more than tragic misfire from extremely talented director James Bridges ("The Paper Chase", "Urban Cowboy") that makes the dire mistake of treating the aerobics, health club fad of the mid-80s as a serious cultural phenomenon (ugh).

It also helped to derail John Travolta's career for the better part of a decade - sad, because all one has to do is take a look at his outstanding performances in "Blow Out" and "Urban Cowboy" and realize that his acting in "Perfect" was just fine (if a bit low key). It's a shame, he could have made a lot of great movies while he was stuck in dreck like "The Experts" and strange late 80s Altman theatre pieces like Pinter's "The Dumb Waiter" (with Tom Conti!).

Travolta plays a Rolling Stone journalist hot on the trail of a big story about how health clubs are the new pick-up joints, replacing singles bars. He meets "The Pied Piper of aerobics teachers" Jamie Lee Curtis, a former Olymic swimmer who was once burned by a journalist over a piece about how she was having an affair with her coach. Of course, she and Travolta hook up and Travolta meets some other folks who frequent the gym, who are like supporting characters in a David Lynch movie (I'm unsure if the director intended to portray them as weird as they come off).

Real-life Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner shows up to essentially play himself (not very well) and, in the film's most laughable detail, Travolta writes a version of his story portraying health clubs as Emersonian watering holes of the future (or something like that).

It's all kind of bloated and weird, but really not that bad. Travolta's actually pretty good. Jamie Lee Curtis looks great but comes off as slightly grouchy, but she was probably directed that way.

Don't miss Travolta's notorious pelvic thrust sequence (you can't miss it).

SPOILER: "The Hitcher" (young C. Thomas Howell) and "Risky Business" came out, Wes Craven was doing his "Nightmare on Elm Street" series...so what did we young people have for drama? This.

If you need a laugh now, you may want to tune in. While Jamie Lee Curtis tries to elevate this, it is simply not elevate-able.

Laraine Newman and Marilu Henner are gym groupies with no self-esteem, (Marilu gets the Chippendale man though, so it's all good). John Travolta as a semi-literate writer at "Rolling Stone". (We know he is good, because in the end he goes to jail for protecting a source). There are some scenes with Jann Wenner and Lauren Hutton, apparently the then in-crowd, at a party.

The really sad part about this is that there really were people like this; the gym was a sense of self-esteem;(along with anorexia). Aerobics class became the next singles hang-out as the song "Masquerade" blares out, while everyone obsesses over plastic surgery and the perfect body (The Laraine Newman character is particularly pathetic).

We see the superficiality. Has anything changed? Indeed, they could remake this with Jessica Simpson as the lead. Someone get on the phone to CAA!.

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.

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

Watching him and Jamie Lee Curtis "workout" was quite entertaining. Aerobics really was the soft core porn of the 80s and there's a lot of it in the movie. They even threw in a Chippendales performance for good measure. The film itself is alright, acting isn't bad and the storyline is ok but the ending is rather cliche and predictable. The soundtrack might be the best part. Fun to watch for nostalgia and the Carly Simon cameo but other than that I don't think there's a lot here really.