You knew it eventually had to happen. With Hollywood continuing to mine old movies and TV shows for "new" films, they've now excavated a mid 1980s to early '90s sitcom where two disparate cousins -- one an American bachelor, the other a whacky Mediterranean shepherd -- share an apartment in Chicago as a modern-day odd couple, resulting in all sorts of zany shenanigans.
With Jon Heder starring as Balki...(sound of phone ringing)...What's that? It's not? Oh, but I read it on the Web. Really? You don't say? Okay, thanks. Sorry about that. It seems this week's movie isn't a remake of "Perfect Strangers," but is instead "Perfect Stranger."
Granted, the faux Internet story (that, yes, I penned myself and just read on the Internet) fits in with the would-be thriller as it's yet another example of not believing what you read online. After all, who knows the validity of such postings, especially if seen in some nebulous chat room where the suave-sounding guy could actually be a 12-year-old girl and the alluring lady is really a pot-bellied, middle-aged man just having fun with you.
Yes, "Perfect Stranger" wants us to know about the dangers lurking in cyberspace -- not exactly a novel warning in or out of movies -- but it doesn't address the biggest danger of them all (at least purposefully). And that's the potential of a bad when not downright ludicrous thriller about such matters.
Providing additional fodder for those who want to recall past winners' Oscars for subsequent movie choices, the film stars Halle Berry as an investigative reporter. She's just quit her newspaper gig due to only just now learning that powerful people protect other powerful people (meaning her lone informant has gotten cold feet and heavy pockets from all of the cash recently stuffed into them to remain mum).
Nevertheless, the reporting bug is still in her, so when a childhood acquaintance ends up dead after just informing her that she was having an affair with an advertising executive, she decides to go undercover -- in person in one guise, and online in another -- to figure out whether he killed or had her killed.
Considering the late in the game developments and revelations that put the finishing touches on derailing the rest of this offering (which I won't spoil for you should you be masochistic enough to want to sit through this), her decision to proceed on this course doesn't make any sense, at least not at first, until another revelation follows the first. Yet, considering that first one, you'd think she'd be sending Bruce Willis' smarmy ad exec some online thank you notes.
Then again, that wouldn't result in much of a thriller, not that what director James Foley and screenwriter Todd Komarnicki concoct is much better. Thus, Rowena does her undercover bit and seduces Mr. Hill who, when not overseeing enough product placement to finance this film and its straight to video sequel, spends the rest of his time at work cheating on his wife by chatting up various ladies online.
With the help of her tech-savvy assistant -- Giovanni Ribisi, who has such a puppy love crush on her that you know something seedy and creepy just has to be around the corner -- she exchanges bits of innuendo with the head honcho, all as the incriminating clues start piling up. And as we see that Willis' character has an interesting way of dealing with corporate malfeasance (grabbing an employee, yanking him over his desk, and tossing him out into the hallway), we're supposed to worry that the same is going to happen to our pretty undercover lass when she gets too close to the edge.
That is, when we're not preoccupied by whether she's going to run out of stylish outfits for the multitude of costume changes that not only complement Berry's beauty, but also are far more interesting than anything else in the film. Considering that Foley utilizes the usual , end of the movie thriller convention of showing us scenes of what we've already seen to explain everything (something that also occurs just minutes into the film -- I'm not kidding -- where we see something we just saw moments earlier), I'm surprised we're not treated to a fashion rewind as well.
You'll have to pardon these detours in the critique, but all of that's far more interesting than the rest of what's offered in this handsome looking but ultimately ludicrous, overblown and never believable thriller. While the eventual revelations are set up so as not to come completely out of the blue, that doesn't make them any easier to swallow, a point exacerbated by the fact that we don't care about any of the characters.
Although Berry is certainly fetching to the eye, she can't do anything with her role that gets more ridiculous with full exposure. Willis couldn't look more bored than he does here, meaning the chemistry between them lacks the sort of sordid sparks needed to fuel such a thriller. Ribisi has a little fun with his role, but that evaporates the more desperate his character becomes.
After sitting through this mess, the idea of adding an "s" to the title and reintroducing Balki to the masses is starting to sound better and better. In the singular, "Perfect Stranger" is all dressed up with nowhere to go as it wastes any potential suspense on less than believable behavior and "surprise" developments and revelations. Worthy of being zapped by some Internet filter, the film rates as a 2 out of 10.
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