(Adam Lawrence); Jamie Lee Curtis (Jessie Wilson); Jann Wenner (Mark Roth); Marilu Henner (Sally); Anne De Salvo (Frankie); Laraine Newman (Linda) by Aaron Latham and Bridges; Based on Rolling Stone articles by Latham(1985/Columbia Pictures) DVD / VHS
Rave Reviews
“So obnoxiously over-hyped that its dismal failure made it the laughingstock of 1985!” —Michael Sauter, The Worst Movies of All Time
“Best horror film of 1985, [featuring a] great three-minute Dueling Pelvises scene.”
—Joe Bob Briggs, Joe Bob’s Ultimate B-Movie Guide (Web site)
“A camp classic … an unintentionally hilarious mixture of muddled moralizing and all-too-contemporary self-promotion.”
—Vincent Canby, New York Times
Plot, What Plot? Few things are funnier than a dumb movie with “serious film” intentions. Perfect, cloaking itself pretentiously in the garb of being a “serious film” about journalistic ethics, is actually a lame framework onto which are hung a series of ever more overtly sexual (and irresistibly silly) riffs on the 1980s fitness craze. Audiences, which laughed the film out of theatres in its initial release, clearly chose not to take this film seriously at all.
The main character is John Travolta, playing an ambitious reporter who works his way up from the obit desk of the Jersey Journal to being a star reporter for Rolling Stone, stomping on people’s feelings and rights of privacy every step of the way. When he’s assigned to do an “in depth” article suggesting that fitness gyms are “the singles bars of the ’80s,” Travolta gets way too attached to his subject. Setting down roots in L.A. (the epicenter of all fads and crazes), Travolta decides to focus specifically on one subject, hot-bodied aerobics instructor Jamie Lee Curtis. But before you can say “clichéd movie plot #137,” Johnny has fallen in love with Jamie, and finds himself torn between doing his job as a journalist… or just doing Jamie.
Chock-full of lines like “She’s the most overused piece of equipment in the gym,” Perfect was clearly written by men who appreciate women only as the subject of wet dreams, then are nonplussed when women resent being objectified by them. As the only character not immediately impressed with Travolta, Curtis should be someone we admire. But then, every time Travolta asks to attend one of her aerobics classes, there she is in a leotard with its crotch open practically to her navel, thrusting away to awful ’80s pop music and grinding her pelvis into the camera with a big, satisfied smile on her face. And across the classroom, with about six pairs of socks stuffed into his shorts and matching Curtis pelvic thrust for pelvic thrust, is Travolta. These scenes are the … um, meat of the film, and were supposed to keep audiences in their seats while the actors waded through the “message” parts of the picture.
And the message seems to be: Standing by your journalistic principles is good for your sex life. While working on the fitness article, shtupping Jamie, and pumping her for info, Travolta is also writing a piece about a millionaire accused of drug trafficking. When the rich man’s case comes to trial and Johnny refuses to turn over his interview tapes on principle, he winds up in jail, with Jamie literally waiting for him outside the gates. All ends happily (doesn’t it always in movies this dumb?) as the millionaire is acquitted, Travolta is released, and everyone is reunited for one more aerobics class, shown under the end titles. It’s the Perfect ending to one of the most smugly self-important movies of the 1980s, which in reality was as empty as a pair of smelly gym socks tossed into a hamper.
Dippy Dialogue
Jesse (Jamie Lee Curtis): “What is so wrong with wanting to be perfect?!?!”
Choice Chapter Stop
Chapter 13 (“Shock Me”): In which Johnny and Jamie follow up great sex with a different kind of pelvic-thrusting workout, this time at the gym.