SCREEN

Perfect Stranger

Josh Bell

Things only go downhill from there, for Rowena as well as the film. An old friend of hers turns up dead, and Rowena suspects slick ad executive Harrison Hill (Willis, barely bothering to read his lines), so she goes undercover as a temp to seduce him and gather evidence—rather than, say, alerting the police. This is exactly the kind of movie that Ashley Judd would have starred in five years ago, only Judd usually managed to retain some shred of dignity in her woman-in-peril thrillers.

Not so Berry, who flails and wails and ultimately fails as Rowena, unable even to convey the sultry sex appeal which is really her only redeeming quality at this point. Even as her pervy assistant (Ribisi, who rivals Berry in the overacting department) ogles her creepily, and director Foley's camera follows suit, Berry only looks uncomfortable. Worse are the numerous scenes that rely on Internet chat rooms to create both suspense and sexual heat and succeed at neither, instead generating a vague camp charm at their complete cluelessness about what people actually do online.

Online chatting is just one of many things that this film completely misunderstands—others include advertising, journalism, the average size of apartments in New York City and, of course, basic plotting and coherence. The requisite twist ending is completely nonsensical, but by the time you get there, things have gotten so absurd that the only proper response is to laugh it off—much like Berry seems to be doing with her career.

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