For all its third act nuttiness, The Perfect Guy really should have gone way crazier.

It uses convention to its advantage through an intriguing play with casting choices and bizarrely effective allusions to film history.

The kind of movie you keep wishing would just cut loose and go off the deep end. Nobody goes to these "Fatal Attraction" retreads anymore for serious drama. But this one is a movie torn — too grim and self-important to go truly nuts, but too silly and slipshod to work on a more somber level.

Despite an appealing trio of leads, it seems likely to entice only those with an unquenchable thirst for thriller cliches.

Substitute a cat for the bunny (no spoilers here about its fate) and you have the ironically titled, generic thriller The Perfect Guy that somehow wound up on the big screen instead of on Lifetime.