Genre: comedy, crime

The Perfect Score

Directed by Brian Robbins

Written by Mark Schwahn,

Marc Hyman and Jon Zack

Starring Scarlett Johansson,

Erika Christensen, Chris Evans

Classification: PG

Rating: *½

Oh, it's perfect all right. In fact, The Perfect Score is a flawless example of the classic January movie release -- the kind of studio picture that even the studio loathes, and so consigns to the dumping ground of the year's frosty first month. There, amid the wintry chill, these also-rans get to compete on the level playing ground of mediocrity -- the unfunny vying with the non-thrilling, the hopeless taking on the useless, the banal going toe-to-toe with the mundane. The charitable view, I suppose, is to see all this in the spirit of fair play, whereupon the sorry spectacle becomes almost poignant -- so many pint-sized flicks comparing their meagre inches in a desperate struggle to stand tall.

Alas, even among the ranks of the diminutive, this one's got nothing to boast about. The basic plot: Faced with the pressure of getting into a good university, a bunch of high-school seniors set out to steal the answers to the SAT test. Of course, this larcenous premise is itself stolen from any number of movies that have dabbled in similar student shenanigans -- Cheats on the large screen, Cheaters on the small, to cite only the most recent. And to what end is the premise put? My guess is comedy, but it's merely a guess and a wild one at that.

Anyway, the thieves in question are a polyglot assembly of youth at its clichéd best. There are the four white kids: the middle-class boy who dearly wants to be an architect (Chris Evans); his female counterpart driven hard by a matched set of pushy parents (Erika Christensen); the poor little rich girl neglected by her narcissistic daddy (Scarlett Johansson); and the lovesick blue-collar kid who's just an amiable oaf (Bryan Greenberg).

Cultural diversity comes in equally trite shades: Like the black basketball star keen to shoot his hoops on the college courts, if only he can get those marks up (Darius Miles). His mom, needless to say, is a proud matriarch and stern disciplinarian, a woman wise to the perils of her son's athletic ambitions -- best to get an education just in case those jump shots start falling short. Finally, we have the Asian lad (Leonardo Nam), a pot-smoking layabout who, for a few shining moments, gives us hope that at least one cliché might be left unturned -- but then he goes and spoils it by proving himself a computer whiz.

So, with the gang all here, it's on to the little matter of the SAT heist. My but our burglars are bunglers -- they can't see behind their masks, they bump into desks, they fall out of trees, they mistake a shredding machine for a Xerox copier. This is what leads me to surmise that the film's intentions are comic. But I could be wrong, especially since the faux-comedy sometimes gives way to faux-drama that then shoves over for faux-romance. If you're looking for authenticity, all that can be said for sure is that the filler is real -- even at a sparse 90-odd minutes, this demi-feature packs a lot of padding.

En route, the script pauses to take a few swipes at the inequities of the SATs -- their racial bias, their herd mentality, their commercialization. Sure, what better place to critique standardized testing than in a standardized movie where standardized characters meander through a standardized plot? Worse, those characters all end up as sanitized goody-goodies -- completely wimping out, the writers lack the strength of their critical convictions.

As for the cast, a couple of names definitely catch our attention. Remember Erika Christensen, and her stirring turn as the drug-addicted daughter in Traffic? Then there's Scarlett Johansson, coming off her splendid work in Lost in Translation and Girl with a Pearl Earring. It's instructive to watch how these two performers, both gifted, cope with such a January movie. Christensen gets completely done in by the stuff, and sinks without a trace. Yet, not always but intermittently, Johansson somehow finds a way to flash her magic and shine amid the dross. Only a really great actor can transcend really bad material. Forget about that silly Oscar snub, Johansson is a major talent -- this star has risen.