Perfect (1985)

Directed by James Bridges. Starring John Travolta, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jann Werner, Laraine Newman, Marilu Henner, Anne De Salvo, Mathew Reed, Stefan Gierasch, Kenneth Welsh. [R]

A missed opportunity to craft an exposé on journalistic integrity and/or the health club craze’s drive for unattainable physical perfection; instead, the movie gets lost in too many plot threads, too much repetition, and an unpersuasive love story resolved too neatly by the rushed ending. Travolta is a Rolling Stone reporter who heads out to the West Coast for a story on gyms being “the new single bars”, and while pursuing an interview with the club’s most popular aerobics instructor (Curtis), he becomes romantically involved with her. A lot of time is wasted, whether with a different article he wrote about an arrested businessman (Welsh) or with scenes where Travolta and Curtis either rehash behavior and responses or spell out the themes in a heavy-handed fashion; far more interesting is a re-route into the life of a sweet but shallow single gal (Newman) on the make who nurses (and poorly shields) her insecurities. Travolta and Curtis generate hardly any sparks, not even during the borderline-campy workout sequences where they trade off sweaty, suggestive hip thrusts, although one senses with better writing, their characters (and performances) might have meant something. Rolling Stone magazine’s then real-life editor and publisher, Jann Werner, plays the publication’s fictional counterpart here; Carly Simon and Lauren Hutton cameo as themselves.

45/100