Hilary Duff has a remarkable screen presence, if only because not everyone can convey such effortless artificiality. Without mussing a hair, Duff delivers her lines as if she'd memorized them with the quotation marks intact. She's a performer, not an actor, and she performs as if the successful completion of each scene could earn her a prize. It almost takes talent to do what she does. Almost.
Duff's popularity with girls still on the ponies-and-rainbows end of adolescence has allowed her to carve out a place as the star of squeaky-clean high-school fantasy films in which sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll exist only as distant rumors. In The Perfect Man, she plays the daughter of Heather Locklear, a single mom whose career as a small-time baker apparently never gets in the way of her ability to tote Duff and her bespectacled younger sister (Aria Wallace) from city to city and tastefully decorated home to tastefully decorated home. Amid all the moves, Duff keeps the online community sated with her frequently updated blog, which serves as the film's framing device. (A typical opening line: "Hey, all you bloggers…")
After another in a series of failed relationships drives Locklear out of Wichita, she drags her family to Brooklyn, where she almost immediately hooks up with doughy, Styx-loving loser Mike O'Malley. To counteract this, Duff invents a secret admirer and begins writing love letters to her mom and romancing her via instant messaging. All together now: Ewww! The film never delves into the situation's ickiness, especially since it quickly becomes apparent that Locklear will end the film in the arms of area restaurant owner Chris Noth, the real-life inspiration for Duff's made-up lover-man.
Naturally, The Perfect Man takes the long way to get to point B from point A, and for viewers of a certain age (i.e. over 13), it's likely to seem even longer. Duff doesn't help matters. She shares a few scenes with a lovely orchid. The orchid nearly steals them from her. Where Locklear's careful, clipped delivery confirms that she's better suited for TV stardom than the movies, every time Duff opens her mouth, she confirms that her natural home is in magazines. Or voicing animated squirrels. Either one would work.