The Perfect Man (2005)

What sin did Heather Locklear commit to deserve her role in The Perfect Man? The former Melrose Place vixen is now old enough to portray Hilary Duff's mom, which in Hollywood counts as sin enough. In The Perfect Man, she's a single mother so desperate for male company that she thinks she deserves no better than the loser who drives a Trans-Am and woos her with his late-night-on-the-sidewalk performance of Styx's ''Lady.'' To remedy her mom's dating woes, Duff, who grows perkier the worse her movies get, invents a fictional secret admirer who ''pursues'' Locklear with flowers and cloying e-mail notes. This is the story, in other words, of a woman being wooed by a nonentity; it's You've Got Mail with one hand typing. Duff's character has problems too (she's tired of moving from city to city), but no actress this synthetically wholesome should engage in this much whining. It renders her about as appealing as a lost Olsen triplet.

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