The Perfect Score

The Perfect Bore is a dreary teen thriller, with an ensemble cast plodding through a seismically dull plotline. The presence of Scarlett Johanssen appears to be the only reason why such an unremarkable movie didn't go straight to video.

The lamentable excuse for a story revolves around a bunch of students, desperate to find a way to cheat on their SAT's test and thereby the whole arc of their futures. It doesn't help that the cultural context of the American education system is wholly lost on those not reared on a diet of high school movies, with the effect that the motivating impulses of the main characters, however simplicitically outlined, are hard to relate to. Any potential excitement generated by a daring night raid on a shiny glass building is diluted as each budding thief finds redemption in going straight,

The guys get the girls and the one, half-interesting oddball, an orphaned Asian-American stoner cyberpunk, is pulled back into line by a self-righteously motivated black mutha. The perfect high, it seems, is the perfect score. Passing exams the old fashioned way is - shock horror - cool.

Easy resolutions and vacuous acting reveal the work of a script committee. Irony and danger are hinted at, only to be reeled in to the safer backwaters of Hollywood banality.

Avoid.