The Perfect Find review

The Perfect Find vainly struggles to locate a better plot, premise, scenarios, believability and anything remotely approaching a stronger overall presentation. It’s a messy, silly and outright confusing effort all around that hardly deserves the effort star Gabrielle Union puts into it.

Right from the opening credits the film teases it’s going to be a rough ride. While rolling through the cast and crew, newspaper headlines detail the rise of Jenna (Union) and her boyfriend, Brian (D.B. Woodside, 24), to the power couple naming of BriJenna and their messy breakup. Neither Director Numa Perrier nor screenwriter Leigh Davenport — adapting Tia Williams’ novel — consider this important enough information to show on camera.

Instead, the film opens with Jenna wallowing in self-pity for a year and cramping her mother (Janet Hubert) and father, who is never shown on screen, from having some quality time. OK, Parent Sexy Time. And also, ewww Parent Sexy Time.

Kicked out of her folks’ home, Jenna is forced to go back as she knew it in Brooklyn in a pretty lavish spot. Davenport is light on essential details like what the heck Jenna actually did for a living to make her half of a power couple or how she’s affording this new apartment. This would clash with Jenna’ next move of all but begging her frenemy Darcy (Gina Torres, Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths) to give her a job. Seems like Jenna should have lined up a job first, no?

To celebrate, Jenna’s BFF’s, Elodie (Alani ‘La La’ Anthony) and Billie (Aisha Hinds, Godzilla: King of the Monsters), take her out for a night out. There, the out of practice Jenna meets the suave and much younger Eric (Keith Powers, The Tomorrow War). Perrier seems to be in a rush to spark up this electrifying romance, but Davenport doesn’t put in enough work to adequately explain this connection. After a few cheesy lines, Jenna straddles Eric and they start making out. There’s no pursuit and it comes off far too easy. 

Time for the twist. Eric is Darcy’s son, and she wants Jenna and Eric to work together. From an HR perspective, it doesn’t seem like a good idea for Darcy to have her fresh out of grad school student hanging out with her single, likely on the rebound after a year grieving her relationship sorta friend.

Davenport’s script has too many cracks to keep up with but some of the more egregious merit discussing. We’re supposed to believe that Jenna wouldn’t know that her chief rival doesn’t have a son and wouldn’t have any clue what he looks like? That’s far too big a stretch considering how vain and attention seeking Darcy is presented. It’s not like she hides the fact she has a son.

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Darcy and Jenna supposedly have a history with Darcy alleging that Jenna kept stealing her boyfriends. The time frame of that seems off since Jenna shares that she met Brian in college and they dated for a decade. Was Darcy holding a grudge from high school? Otherwise, the time period of all these hook ups doesn’t check out.

But for the sake of the film, let’s play along. Jenna and Eric have a few scenes cracking on the differences of the other’s age demographics. It’s a space the film could have spent more time on. Perrier does this in one scene where Eric is talking to his friends all talking while glued to their devices. That’s an easy way to convey the generation gap, but there’s never another moment where the age gap is featured in a meaningful way. Eric is just super mature for his age and Jenna doesn’t care that they don’t have the same life experiences.

Eventually, the inevitable happens and the two start a closeted relationship. Jenna understandably doesn’t want to get fired for hooking up with her boss’ son and Eric is oblivious to the consequences for Jenna if their relationship is outed.

Powers is game but lacks the screen presence to shine as a convincing fling for Jenna. It’s not like he’s helping her discover some aspects of herself she buried in the relationship with Brian. Apparently in the breakup, Jenna acted out to the point she became a meme. This is the kind of plot point that would be better showing the viewer instead of telling them.

The film’s biggest issue is Union dutifully drags every nonsensical and questionable scene along. In some cases, Union’s cape just isn’t big enough to fully rescue a scene, but she gives it her earnest best. It’s worth asking how much better would Union have fared if she didn’t have to salvage nearly every scene?

Union doesn’t share much screentime with Woodside, but they had more believable chemistry in a handful of scenes compared to the film with Powers. Torres plays Darcy a little over the top for most of the film, but it’s not a coincidence that the film’s best scenes feature Union and Torres interacting.

The Perfect Find doesn’t live up to its title. If you’re in the mood for a stronger Black romance with comedic elements stick with the classics of Love Jones, Love & Basketball, The Best Man saga, Jumping the Broom and Beyond the Lights.

Rating: 4 out of 10

Photo Credit: Netflix