'Beauty And The Briefcase' Review: Hilary Duff Was Charming, The Plot Was Stale

Dear Hilary Duff — May I call you Hil? Aw, thanks, Hil. I always knew we'd get along. Anyway. You're pretty great at this whole acting thing, overall. You're cheerful, likable, beautiful, and you totally have the best hair ever. But can we talk about your new ABC Family movie, "Beauty and the Briefcase," for a sec?

Because I just wanted to say that anyone as talented and universally adored as you are should maybe have a better sense of which scripts will be good, cheesy fun, like "A Cinderella Story," and which ones will be steaming piles of flat jokes and repetitive dialogue that give women, fashion journalism, and investment banking a bad name, like last night's "Beauty and the Briefcase."

"Beauty" follows Lane, a young freelance fashion journalist, as she goes "undercover" in the "business world" on assignment from Cosmopolitan magazine's Kate White (played by Jamie Pressly) to find a man in a suit. But not only does the man have to look good in a suit, he also has to possess the qualities on her "magic man" checklist. There are many things wrong with that sentence, but the two most wrong things are that she holds the men to impossible, made-up standards, and that she calls the man of her dreams her "magic man." That sounds not only creepy but vaguely pedophilic.

While I wanted to like your movie, Hil, as you dressed up in colorful business casual ensembles and experimented with lipstick shades while unknowingly falling in love with your dorky boss (played by "True Blood" star Mike McMillian, who proceeds to say, "I love you" at the end... in the middle of a boardroom meeting? Really?), all I could see was the writer — who is male, by the way (and could have only been a male, because no self-respecting woman would portray her peers as such vapid, boy-crazy idiots) — conjuring an unbelievable fantasy world where only men are good at business, where a woman's sole purpose in life is to find a man, and where people will believe that "The O.C."'s Chris Carmack has a passable British accent. None of these things are true in the real world. (And for that matter: neither is filing a "cover story" as a "journalist," and then getting your own picture on the cover!)

So, Hil-dawg, when you pick your next role from what I'm sure are the many scripts being offered to you this very moment, maybe read it a little more thoroughly to double-check that your fashionista character will be spunky and smart as opposed to silly and superficial. In the meantime, I'll continue watching my "A Cinderella Story" DVD (heck yes I own it, so?) and pretending this mess of a TV movie didn't happen.

Did you watch "Beauty and the Briefcase" last night? What did you think? Could Hilary save it with her adorableness, or was it too awful to be redeemed? Or are we being totally unfair?

Tags Beauty and the Briefcase, Chris Carmack, Hilary Duff, Jamie Pressly, Matt Dallas, Mike McMillian