MOVIE REVIEW : O’Grady a Real Find in Sunny ‘Nobody’s Perfect’

“Nobody’s Perfect” (selected theaters) steals its title from the famous tag line of “Some Like It Hot.” “Nobody’s perfect” is what Joe E. Brown says to Jack Lemmon when Lemmon explains he’s really a man in drag. This innocuous, contrived romantic comedy is not remotely in the same league as the Billy Wilder classic, but it benefits from its talented young stars: Chad Lowe and Gail O’Grady, in her feature debut.

Lowe plays a shy, naive college freshman who’s maneuvered by his best pal (Patrick Breen), a full-fledged con man, into donning drag so that he might get to know better campus queen O’Grady, with whom he has fallen hopelessly in love at first sight. The next thing we know Lowe ends up as O’Grady’s roommate. Writers Annie Korzen and Joel Block milk Lowe’s predicament for all it’s worth and generate some laughs in the process.

But they undermine an already highly improbable predicament with some queasy cause and effect. Breen wants Lowe, an ace tennis player, in drag so that he can play on the women’s tennis team, allowing Breen to bet $20,000 on the big match. By the time this occurs, however, Lowe, in his drag disguise, has been expelled--but that doesn’t stop him from getting back into drag and being allowed to compete!

Also, the writers tip O’Grady to Lowe’s true identity far too early on, and worse yet, in their characters’ various remarks they reveal an insensitivity to transvestites, a group of people in need of acceptance and understanding rather than scorn.

Lowe and O’Grady, nevertheless, are effective under Robert Kaylor’s sunny, swift direction. Lowe throws himself wholeheartedly into his dual roles, retaining sympathy in both. O’Grady is a genuine discovery, a beauty who’s a throwback to Betty Grable and Lana Turner--and who radiates star quality without a trace of pretentiousness. “Nobody’s Perfect” (PG-13 for language, sexual candor) is far from perfect, but at least it shows off its stars to good advantage.