Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
Six high school seniors decide to break into the Princeton Testing Center so they can steal the answers to their upcoming SAT tests and all get perfect scores.
The Perfect Score is a fairly formulaic teen heist-comedy that follows a predictable ensemble structure borrowed from films like The Breakfast Club, with a group of misfit high schoolers united by a common goal. The plot mechanics are thin and the heist itself lacks real ingenuity. The young cast (including Scarlett Johansson and Chris Evans early in their careers) delivers serviceable performances that elevate the material somewhat, but the screenplay doesn't give them much to work with. The cinematography is unremarkable TV-movie level. The premise has some novelty in targeting the SAT specifically as a cultural institution, but the execution is by-the-numbers. The ending wraps up predictably with little dramatic payoff, opting for a tidy moral resolution rather than anything surprising.