January gave us the gift that was The Boy Next Door, a deliciously cheesy movie about sexual obsession. That film knew it was pure camp and it wallowed in its so-bad-it’s-good-ness. It gave us hot sex, silly catch phrases (“I love your mother’s cookies”), and a completely bonkers ending.
The Perfect Guy, directed by David M. Rosenthal, on the other hand, takes itself extremely seriously. Why? I have no idea. The film is so lackluster, so artless, and so clichéd, I can hardly believe it was made, except perhaps as a showcase for its talented cast. (Note to said cast: Fire your agents.)
The film’s only virtue is its beauty. Sanaa Latham as Leah, the powerful and wealthy lawyer, is beautiful. Morris Chestnut as Dave, her commitment-phobic boyfriend, is beautiful. And—*fans self*—Michael Ealy, as Carter, the seemingly perfect guy Leah hooks up with when she’s on a break from Dave, who turns out to be a dangerous stalker, is beautiful. The clothing is beautiful. Leah’s house is Architectural Digest-level beautiful—at one point, I became fixated on a chandelier she had in her living room and made a note to try to find a similar one on the Internet.
Everything happens exactly as you would expect, to an embarrassing degree. The neighbor we get a few brief glimpses of—a goner. The cat—imperiled. The spare key that Leah had shown Carter one night before she knew he was a psycho—still there, exactly where she left it.
The film is so shoddily put together, there are are moments when people reference conversations that were clearly left on the cutting room floor. What dialogue we do get, is along the lines of this:
Carter: You sure I’m not still in the picture?
Dave: You are so out of the picture, it’s not even funny.
You know what else is not funny? The fact that I wasted two hours of my life on this stinker.