Perfect cast and a good story

A Masterpiece!

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

The Perfect Match is a flat, predictable and derivative romantic comedy about a womaniser who loves em and leaves em but then has the tables turned on him.Charlie (Terrence Jenkins) is a music agent with an interest in photography. His friends bet him that if he sticks to one woman for one month, he is bound to fall in love.After Charlie meets Eva (Cassie Ventura) things change in his life as she expresses an interest in him and his hobbies. He develops feelings for her but Eva wants a relationship without any strings, just hot sex.The film has plenty of beautiful women but is not that funny and is rather clunky.

. . . as a thematic remake of LAST TANGO IN PAR!S, only in an American Urban Setting. Terence Jenkins is cast in the Marlon Brando role, Boffing a random Bride-to-Be right through her final Pure White Dress fitting, just as Brando had earlier. However, THE PERFECT MATCH surrounds Bride Poker Jenkins with a gaggle of loquacious friends, so that a copious outpouring of verbal diarrhea can be substituted for 99.9% of LAST TANGO's sex. THE PERFECT MATCH constitutes the perfect film to watch any time you find yourself trapped for a night in a small one-bed suite with an attractive-but-married supervisor, coworker, or subordinate due to a hotel booking error, and you need to put something on the TV that's such an erotic wet blanket\total sensual snuff out that you'll surely be asleep before your unexpected roommate can finish brushing their teeth. Additionally, THE PERFECT MATCH is carefully constructed to make its target audience feel great about our stake in America, as its work-places, homes, and furnishings should prove easily within reach for anyone making it through eighth grade at the average L.A., Detroit, or Newark middle school.

Terrence J is the best reason to see this otherwise, clunky romantic comedy whose title doesn't justify a means to an end. The Perfect Match (my latest review) has him playing Charlie. Charlie is an agent, a freelance photog, and a guy who is not into relationships. When it comes to sex, he eventually loses interest in every female he hooks up with. After Charles meets Eva (played by Cassie Ventura), things change. He starts to have genuine feelings for her (because the film's plot mechanics require us to believe so). She might be using him for a little ohh la la or she might be engaged to another man. Either way you look at it, the womanizer gets the tables turned on him, the player gets played. The Perfect Match huh. The "perfect" foil sounds more like it.Anyway, despite its lush LA setting and flamboyant soundtrack comprised of unknown, R&B singles, "Match" is all too familiar and virtually emotion-free. Like I said earlier, Terrence J is the only good thing going for it. He's got the looks, he's got the voice, and in my opinion, has the makings of a budding movie star. With almost no formal acting training (he started out as a radio DJ and I remember seeing him on Kourtney & Khloe Take Miami), I feel he could successfully headline his own flick. The Perfect Match sadly, is not the platform to do that.This is 1992's Boomerang without a decent script. This is Think Like A Man without any interesting characters. This is a so-called romcom without any real, suggestive humor. There are some bad, out of place cameos (Robin Givens, French Montana, Brandy Norwood), some bad, out of place supporting performances (J. Lo's 28 year-old boyfriend playing a rapper agent who rides around on a hoverboard, really?), troupers that drink enough alcohol to promote either liver disease or cirrhosis (remember the dudes in About Last Night?), and the actual director (Billie Woodruff) using his own name as the heading of the film's fictional, fertility clinic (huh?). In terms of its cinematic look, well The Perfect Match is slick, upper classified, and untarnished. You could literally eat off the screen it's on but that doesn't make the proceedings any more effective.All in all, it's obvious that "Match" was marketed weakly as it currently plays on under 1000 screens with practically no showings for critics. You can tell why. It's pretty but pretty disposable. Bottom line: There's another movie out there with the words "The" and "Perfect" attached to it. I suggest you see that one instead. Rating: 2 stars.

It begins and ends with the letter grade. The grade I ultimately give a movie, emblazoned as a graphic on the movie poster, is the first thing people see when they come across one of my reviews on the internet – and it's almost always the last thing at the end of my written reviews. I make mental notes for my review as I'm watching a film, but the grade is something else altogether. It's like a bottle in the ocean, bobbing up and down, and carried by the tide, before eventually coming to rest on some beach where it will remain, unchanging and unmoved, for all to see. (Unless, of course, some knucklehead runs off with it or breaks it and ruins my whole analogy.) Usually that grade, once it starts to become visible about 1/3 of the way through a movie, stays roughly in the same area and eventually lands not far from where it started. But sometimes, that grade first comes into view at a very low tide and then a rather large wave lifts it surprisingly high until it settles onto some sort of middle ground – probably between a rock and a hard place. That was what happened when I saw the romantic comedy "The Perfect Match" (R, 1:36).Charlie (Terrence Jenkins, or Terrence J, as he's better known) is a successful celebrity agent, he's handsome and, closing in on his 30th birthday, has everything he's ever wanted – in his words, "making money, driving a fast car and hooking up with models," – with special emphasis on that last one. You see, Charlie, by his own admission, doesn't "do relationships" and he doesn't feel like he's missing anything. Those who know him best would beg to differ. His older sister, Sherry (Paula Patton), who happens to be a therapist, worries that Charlie's emotionally closed off. His best friends, Rick (Donald Faison), who is working on having a baby with his wife, Pressie (Dascha Polanco), and Victor (Robert Christopher Riley), who is planning a long-awaited wedding to his childhood sweetheart, Ginger (Lauren London), both have mad respect for his skills with the ladies, but think it's time for him to settle down. Even though they're just asking him to try it, Charlie isn't happy with his friends trying to cramp his style.Charlie is tired of his friends dogging him, so he agrees to a bet with them. He'll date one single woman – exclusively – until Victor's wedding (about a month away) to prove to Rick and Victor that he won't get attached, doesn't need to be attached and is perfectly alright remaining detached. Enter Eva (Cassie Ventura). She actually overheard Charlie talking over this bet with his friends and isn't sure that Charlie is her type, but just like Charlie has never been in a long-term relationship, Eva has never been in a short-term one and she says she wants to try something new. Charlie and Eva agree to some no-strings-attached fun and begin spending a lot of time together. Of course, since this a romantic comedy, one of them develops feelings for the other. And, because this is a romantic comedy, you may think you know how this story ends. I'd suggest that you slow your roll. Whatever you're assuming is probably wrong.By the way, this movie is more than "just" a romantic comedy. In terms of character development, we also see a good bit of Charlie at work. (Remember the first two of those things he said he always wanted? Well, this is where they come in.) Charlie isn't just "an" agent – he's the most valuable agent at his company. Working for the jaded Marty (Joe Pantoliano) and with the obnoxious Abram (Beau Casper Smart) and Charlie's nerdy assistant, Kareem (Steven Daniel Brun), Charlie shows that he's great at what he does. We see him interacting with clients such as Timothy DeLaGhetto (as himself) and "Avatia" (Brandy Norwood), in a short but funny scene accompanied by her assistant, Karen (Kali Hawk). Charlie's main focus is trying to sign French Montana (as himself) to a deal that'll benefit him, Charlie's firm and some other parties as well. Then, just as Charlie's attitudes toward romance and other personal issues look like they might be changing, so might his attitude towards his job and his avocation of photography."The Perfect Match" has a pretty bad first half, but a very good second half. For about half of the movie, the acting is suspect, the dialog is boring, the plot points feel forced and there is nary a laugh in this romantic comedy. After the story really gets going, however, the performances seem better, the conversations feel more authentic, the story offers some interesting twists and genuine surprises and the humor ebbs and flows much better. If I were grading the movie in segments, I'd probably give the first half a "C-" and the second half a "B+". But, evaluating an entire movie, my grade ends up somewhere in between, but giving slightly more credit to the movie for actually taking us someplace entertaining, in spite of its slow and uninspired start. In the end, caught between a rock and a hard place on this one, I'm giving the overall movie my barest of recommendations – with a suggestion that if you joined the film about 30-40 minutes into the action, you might actually enjoy it more as a whole. "B-"