David Hyde Pierce is best known to most audiences as the erudite, overly fussy brother of the titular “Frasier” on NBC’s long running sitcom. Undoubtedly, he has mastered that role to perfection and even when his voice comes up, narrating those amusing Ikea ads, it immediately conjures the know-it-all fusspot that continually confounded Dr. Frasier Crane for over a decade. And really, Hyde Pierce could very easily simply parlay that persona into other television shows and programs, but thankfully for us, he doesn’t. And in his latest effort, the black comedy “The Perfect Host,” he skewers that image with gleeful abandon.
The film opens with John Taylor (Clayne Crawford) on the run and bleeding after recently holding up a bank and things are not going well. Ducking into a convenience store to grab some antiseptic (look out for always awesome George Cheung as the clerk) he is nearly mugged by a girl who decides to hold up the store. Glancing quickly at a TV in the store before leaving, he learns that he has already been identified as the robber and jumping into his car, he hears over the radio that it’s also been fingered as the getaway vehicle. He quickly ditches the vehicle and tries to hide out in one of the homes in an upscale Los Angeles neighborhood. At the first house, noticing a sticker in the window, he tries to pass himself off as a fellow Jehovah’s Witness who has lost his way and needs some help. Failing there, he goes to another house down the road, reaches into the mailbox and finding a postcard, he poses as a friend of Julia, the sender. Explaining that the airline lost his luggage and that he was mugged at the airport, John claims to the homeowner that he’s really the only person he knows in town, thanks to Julia, and it would be a big favor if he could help him out. That homeowner? David Hyde Pierce.
At first, Warwick Wilson (Pierce) seems like, well, the perfect host. Pouring glasses of wine and inviting him to sit down and relax, they both wait for John’s “cousin” to call and pick him up. It’s a cover that John is using for now until he can plot his next move. Continuing to be a gracious knight in shining armor and with John’s “cousin” not picking up his phone, Warwick offers John to stay for the dinner party he had planned to host that evening. John can’t afford to be seen and with the veneer of his con beginning to crack he comes clean to Warwick and keeps him hostage in his own home until he can figure out what to do. But the twists don’t end there as Warwick quickly turns the tables on him. To say any more would ruin the surprises that are in store.
To put it bluntly: Warwick is certifiably crazy. Lost in his delusions he begins to put the screws to John with a plan that will leave him dead. Hyde Pierce is pitch perfect here, equal parts hilariously loony and frighteningly menacing. John does his best to keep up, but it doesn’t help that his character is underwritten and kind of boring. He isn’t given much to do other than react, and some overwrought flashbacks scenes that try to get us to sympathize with him by explaining his motivations to do the job don’t quite work. His reason is both topical and treacly, and the shades of politicking behind it seem to belong in a different film.
And if John isn’t well fleshed out, as you might imagine, the script does have its problems. There are a couple of instances during the film when John could have left on his own accord, finding a way out of the cat-and-mouse game constructed by Warwick, but for some rather extraordinary (and unbelievable) reasons he gets himself pulled back into the situation. And while these instances will gnaw at the back of your head, Hyde Pierce is so enjoyable to watch that it’s easy enough to just let go and see where the film goes. And writer/director Nick Tomnay rewards you for that effort. The last 10 to 15 minutes of the film turn the plot over about three or four times, but it’s never too much, and again, it’s so much fun you don’t mind dropping the critical bar a little bit.
If “The Perfect Host” is fun, it’s also flawed. Once you’re out of theater it doesn’t take much to pull one card out of the film’s rather flimsily constructed plot to have it come crumbling down. But if you put aside your doubts, “The Perfect Host” is imperfect entertainment. [B-]