The Perfect Guy (2015), PG-13, ★★

He is The Perfect Guy...or is he not?

Ladies...who is The Perfect Guy? Gentlemen...who is The Perfect Lady? In all cases, only one guy and only one woman know who the perfect other is in this world and in this lifetime. However, the perfect other can have a suspicious background in their past or maybe have a dark personality like switching from being a nice charming person to a psychopathic lunatic. When going through a dark phase in a relationship, one wants to get in the game as soon as possible but this movie is sort of a lesson as to what kind of a person you will find at a random place. This movie plays like a "Basic Instinct-type" of vibe of highlighting an intriguing but dark relationship but the cliches pile up in the first two-thirds and a little bit of the final third but with a little twist. But, this is still a product of no originality and little suspense.

Leah Vaughn (Sanaa Lathan) is an accomplished lobbyist who has an unstable relationship with her boyfriend, David (Morris Chestnut), who does not want to commit to having a family, which ultimately causes them to break up. A few months later, she is at a bar having a drink with a random guy until a handsome IT charmer named Carter Duncan (Michael Ealy) woos her and grow close. They have a connection but one day at a gas station, Carter attacks the man, in which he thinks that he is seducing Leah. Leah breaks up with Carter after that fight.

Several weeks later, Carter stalks Leah at her job and leaves mysterious phone calls, even when she changes the calls. Carter is left with a restraining order at his job which ultimately leaves him to get fired. He does a lot of things to get her back but David re-enters into the picture to get re-acquainted with Leah but Carter stills stalks her and David. David grimly warns him to stay away from her. So, the tables have turned. Then, it turns to sort of a Cape Fear-wannabe.

Michael Ealy: The Stalker...in the movie, of course.

This movie was executed as well as I thought with starting with the situation of a relationship going downhill and one of the counterparts taking a break. Then, it becomes a predictable romance and then turns into something interesting with the guy being a psychopath. However, it just becomes cliche after cliche but with a small twist in the last third. The filmmakers had material that is worth watching but then it becomes a meal of Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct with Cape Fear as a dessert. I have seen all this material before. In addition to my complaints, The woman-in-danger genre, now, is the most predictable and tired genre in the movies right now. You know what is going to happen to the female lead. No Good Deed, The Boy Next Door, etc.

Sanaa Lathan and Morris Chestnut play one-note characters that try to resolve a situation of their relationship and that portion of the movie is good, but there's no character development. There's no energy. I do like the casting of Michael Early as the stalker-ish psychopath because he character is a handsome and charming guy and it is interesting. If they had put type-casted actor, it would have been awful. It would have been trash. But, unfortunately, his character belongs in another movie.

What you have are two movies that have good portions of each film but sort of downgrades into cliched moments. I mean, for example, you have a good club scene as a moment of their relationship and then they heated sex. Do you really think that that would not happen in the movie? I can understand that some might enjoy it as a guilty pleasure. I mean we had a similar type of movie like this and it was called Fifty Shades of Grey. This movie is better than Fifty Shades of Grey, but by about two inches. This movie is slickly-executed with attractive characters but when the cliches pile up, it is a missed opportunity to have something different.

**