The Perfect Score

Directed by Brian Robbins, The Perfect Score follows several high schoolers, including Chris Evans’ Kyle and Scarlett Johansson’s Francesca, as they conspire to steal the answers for an upcoming SAT test. It’s compelling subject matter that is, for the most part, employed to hopelessly underwhelming and curious sluggish effect by Robbins, as the filmmaker, armed with a script by Mark Schwahn, Marc Hyman, and Jon Zack, delivers a momentum-free endeavor that contains few attention-grabbing, wholeheartedly entertaining attributes – with the arms-length atmosphere perpetuated by an assortment of one-dimensional (and mostly unsympathetic) central characters. (This is especially true of Leonardo Nam’s grating turn as his broadly-conceived figure, an annoying stoner named Roy.) And although the picture admittedly does boast a very small handful of compelling sequences (eg Kyle has a heart-to-heart with his older brother, Matthew Lillard’s Larry), The Perfect Score, which builds towards a seriously, almost shockingly anticlimactic final stretch, predominantly comes off as a half-baked and misbegotten misfire that doesn’t even succeed as a heist picture (ie it’s the dullest heist ever, pretty much).

** out of ****