Starring Sanaa Lathan and Michael Ealy. Rated PG.

By and large, I try to avoid spoilers, but once you get past The Perfect Guy’s obviously ironic title, there’s nothing left to spoil.

Sanaa Lathan plays Leah, an L.A. lobbyist who suddenly breaks up with her hunky, caring boyfriend (Morris Chestnut) after two years because he’s not quite ready to have a family. Into the void just as quickly swoops an IT-surveillance expert called Carter, played by Barbershop standout Michael Ealy. He promises her that he gets immense pleasure from “making ladies like you feel safe and secure”. Uh-oh.

The snoopy dude’s a real charmer, but something about his blue eyes and the oblong shape of his head should have reminded our heroine of her time in Alien vs. Predator. Nothing suggesting that kind of sleazy fun happens, however, under the pedestrian direction of David M. Rosenthal (A Single Shot), working from an even clunkier script by Tyger Williams (hard to believe he wrote Menace II Society). This sub-Lifetime movie mines every stalker cliché from Fatal Attraction to last year’s No Good Deed, which at least had Idris Elba going for it.

Clearly, these filmmakers are willing to throw out the bunny with the bathwater to get cheap effects. Leah has an indistinct personality to begin with, and she certainly isn’t someone who’s able to take even rudimentary steps to protect herself. (Judging from her hygiene habits, she’s never seen Psycho, either.) We go all the way to San Francisco to meet Leah’s eccentric parents, and then they’re never seen again. Until her bland character has a turnaround near the end, the movie delivers one setup after another that all get knocked down pretty much the way you expect.

On one level, it’s enjoyable to see a genre flick with ostensibly colour-blind casting. Okay, then why did I feel so queasy watching two highly successful black men (after that ex reenters the story) turn into vicious brutes with little provocation? It doesn’t help that the most complicated presence is that of a white police detective (Holt McCal-lany), who tells Leah to solve her problems by buying a gun. Yeah, that always makes people feel safe and secure.