I’m willing to admit it; I tend to judge a book by its cover, and a movie by its poster – and I was hating Perfect long before I pressed the play button.

It’s the poster’s combination of a sleazy tabloid cover with John Travolta paired with Jamie Lee Curtis in a aerobics leotard that gave me the association I was in for an eighties version of Saturday Night Fever, something I never imagined I’d have a stomach for. But, I was kind of wrong. There’s certainly a lot of eighties aerobics involved in the movie, but the movie is luckily not just about Travolta being tucked in a pair of tight spandex shorts performing gymnastic moves with a neon, sweat-soaked headband.

Instead, the movie follows Adam, a young, ruthless reporter for the Rolling Stone magazine who’s chasing after two stories, one of which will potentially hurt an aerobics instructor he has fallen in love with. It’s surely no Absence of Malice, but still there’s interesting aspects of a reporter having to weight in the ramifications of his actions while dealing with the issues like professional integrity and loyalty.

80s-o-meter: 86%

Total: 60%