It's Got to be
When Brandon Moore (Jon Cor - The Boy She Met Online) gets called back to the office during his lunch break the last thing he expected was getting a promotion, which would mean transferring to another office in Portland, 3000 miles away from NYC and his girlfriend, Jensyn (Ashley Leggat - Charming Christmas). But that is exactly what happens when Simone Matthews (Adrienne Frantz - I Married Who?) offers him the chance of setting up his own team in a new office. Whilst not happy about being away from Jensyn he promises to make their long distance work, unfortunately someone else wants to cause it to fail. That someone is Simone who sets out to make Brandon her boyfriend and masquerades online as Jensyn to destroy their long distance relationship.
With the word "Perfect" in its title I could already hazard a guess what "The Perfect Girlfriend", a lifetime movie, was going to be and I don't just mean from an entertainment point of view being less than perfect. Here again we have that old chestnut of a woman setting her sights on a guy already in a relationship and to get him sets about destroying his relationship, whilst getting increasingly deranged in her tactics. Sadly it means that "The Perfect Girlfriend" is predictable because of that familiar formula and so you know that in this case Brandon will discover what Simone is up to and has a track record for becoming obsessed with men and then trying to make them hers.
Because "The Perfect Girlfriend" is formula driven it really needs great characters and great acting to work and unfortunately Adrienne Frantz's full on performance as Simone is too big for the movie. The over the top stares, the strutting around like she was in "Dynasty" and the looks of joy when she acts like a scheming vixen are bordering on pantomime like. But it is not just Frantz's performance and character that is the problem as Jon Cor's Brandon is such a do nothing nice guy that at times you just wish someone would slap him.
The one thing which "The Perfect Girlfriend" has going for it is the direction of Curtis Crawford. Now there isn't anything special here, no fancy camera work or clever editing but Crawford's unfussy direction keeps the movie ticking over which is exactly what something so formula driven needs.
What this all boils down to is that with "The Perfect Girlfriend" there is nothing here you won't have seen before and it has nothing which makes you want to watch it again. But in being a typical, formula driven Lifetime movie about an obsessed and dangerous woman it passes some time in an uncomplicated way.
