2185. Perfect Girl (2014)

Starring: Jason Chan, Khaleila Hisham, Christian Lee

Director: Jason Chan

Running Time: 67 mins

Perfect Girl is a Singaporean film about a man and a woman who have had a crush on one another ever since high school, and after bumping into each other years later, they consider getting together, but hesitate as they think of all of their various insecurities.

I really didn’t think all that much of this film. While it takes a different approach to a classic coming-of-age romance, analysing all the stereotypical elements of a relationship in a self-aware manner, but failing to do it with any real humour or interesting drama, meaning that it really doesn’t ever engage you, worsened by a frustrating broken-up structure that completely disrupts the flow of the story right the way through.

First off, let’s quickly talk about the one interesting and unique thing that this film offers. While it isn’t anything particularly impressive, I was glad to see that Perfect Girl tried to do something a little different when it comes to a romance story, taking all of the tropes of the genre and analysing how they often work in a good, self-aware manner, the sort of which should make for some good laughs throughout.

Away from that, however, there really isn’t all that much to write home about with this film. It clearly has brains and originality behind its screenplay, but it doesn’t have the charisma or the character to ever grab your attention, often playing out like a fairly dull, wooden and overly calculated drama that’s more focused on having a clear modus operandi than ever giving you a properly entertaining watch.

With such a short running time (at barely over an hour), it’s also very important to be sharp and impactful throughout, and to keep the viewer fully engaged in order to deliver the same punch as a longer film in less time. However, Perfect Girl doesn’t manage that either, and that’s because of its frustratingly well-planned story structure, which centres around the two main characters thinking about something, emphasised by a title card, and then experiencing a situation related to just that.

As a result, the movie is incredibly episodic, and there is absolutely no flow of drama throughout to keep you engaged in the overall story of their romance, instead buffering along at a slow-moving and frustrating pace, worsened by the film’s general lack of charisma and humour.

Although this movie is fully aware of its nature as a typical romance, it still doesn’t create interesting enough characters, nor ever bring some properly funny humour to the table, and that means it’s simply a very boring watch throughout, without the energy to engage you and help you ignore the frustrating and wooden story.

Overall, I wasn’t impressed with Perfect Girl. It clearly has good brains, originality and intelligence behind it, but it lacks a basic sense of charisma that ultimately makes it a very boring watch, worsened by a frustrating story structure and a general lack of energy, and that’s why I’m giving it a 5.0.