The Girl Next Door | | Cast : | Emile Hirsch, Elisha Cuthbert | | Director : | Luke Greenfield | | Studio : | Twentieth Century Fox Home Video | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby | | Released Date : | March 27, 2004 | | DVD Released Date : | January 25, 2005 | | Language : | French (Dubbed), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Original Language), Spanish (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | Unrated | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | August 06, 2005 | | Summary | Too derivative of Risky Business, but still fun and entertaining | Content
 | Immediately below this review is one by some fool named grinningstupidlyalltheway that should be ignored. There are few things in life more annoying than a person whose IQ falls squarely within the average range, who brazenly and laboriously pretends to be an intellectual but is just an intellectual poser. E.g., grinningstupidlyalltheway.
The following paragraph is pure spoiler, so skip it if you haven't seen the movie and have an interest in seeing a slightly weaker version of Tom Cruise's Joel Goodsen character having adventures with a slightly cuter and hotter version of Rebecca de Mornay's Lana character.
In a nutshell, Matt Kidman is your all-American nerdy but not outright geeky teenager, who falls hard for his next-door neighbor's hot, slightly older niece, who is housesitting for a fortnight. They have some wacky adventures that she instigates, he discovers some confidence and courage along the way and they start falling for each other. However, he learns that Danielle is really a porn star, he listens to his porn-loving king of the A/V club nerds friend Eli and in the process of awkwardly trying to "score" alienates her and Danielle sadly changes her mind about quitting pornography. Her slimy producer/ex-boyfriend Kelly convinces her to go to a porn industry convention in Vegas to push her films and she leaves Matt and suburbia to return to the hard and unpleasant adult life. Matt follows her to Vegas to try to convince her otherwise, telling her "I know who you really are and you are better than this" and the following morning, she surprises him by showing up at his house, convinced he is right and abandoning her unclean past. However, Kelly the sociopathic pimp-producer becomes furious that Matt has stolen his hottest commodity, tracks Matt down, beats him up, gets him to rob the house of Kelly's far more successful rival, abandons Matt after calling the police to report the burglary and then steals the $25,000 that Matt raised to pay for a Cambodian teenage genius to come study at Matt's school in California. The gang has some hijinks that involve Danielle getting several of her fellow porn star friends to be prom dates for Matt's friends Eli and Klitz, Eli directs a sexy sex education video at the prom with said porn stars-with-hearts-of-gold and good triumphs over evil and love prevails.
Ok, let's talk about the actors. There are a fair number of derivative looking actors and characters here, but luckily, I happen to like them all. First, Emile Hirsh (Matt) looks an awfully lot like one or several other actors whose name escapes me (maybe a young Andrew McCarthy crossed with Leonardo DiCaprio?), but he does a really good job of being initially self-conscious but sweet and subsequently a confident guy who develops into an all-around admirable character. Elisha Cuthbert is one of the most charismatic actresses of the past decade, having a rare mix of cute innocence, playful deviousness and raw sensuality. Her character is required to play a provocative prankster, a sweet and lovely girl, a distraught woman who fatalistically succumbs to sinful pressures, a caring supportive girlfriend and the sort of stunning babe every guy (teenage or not) wants fawning over him in front of his best friends and worst enemies. These variations on her roles are not the sort of character acting that will create the next Meryl Streep, but Cuthbert does a very solid job and the previous reviewer's criticisms should be viewed as what they are - blithering nonsense. Hirsh and Cuthbert play their roles well, have great chemistry and really make the movie worth watching. Other actors could be the siblings or children of more famous actors. Chris Marquette, playing Matt's friend Eli, is a spitting image of a teenage John Cusack, sans freckles. Tim Olyphant, playing Kelly the pimp-producer, could fool nearly anyone into thinking he is Jack Nicholson's son/clone.
Ok, this is not a perfect movie and there definitely are some flaws here. First, Eli doesn't quite have the charisma to be the lord of his A/V club "minions." Second, Matt's attendance at Georgetown is a) too tenuous too late in his final semester of high school, for financial reasons; and b) in any event, his parents live in too nice of a house for him to be quite so desperately dependent on a scholarship to pay for his college. Third, how does Kelly get his badass 60's Camaro convertible out to suburban California, drive off with Danielle in her car to Vegas, yet then suddenly have the Camaro the next day? Fourth, how does Matt avoid all negative consequences of showing up to the scholarship speech competition very obviously wired on the Ecstasy that Kelly tricked him into taking? Fifth, how does Kelly manage to steal the Adult Education master tape they filmed prom night? How does he learn of it in the first place, how does he know Eli has it, how does he know where Eli lives and where Eli might have put the tape? How exactly does Kelly know who Matt's principal is, why would he invite the principal to come to Matt's house and how does he convince Matt's parents they should all have a meeting together? And, this is all at the crack of dawn on either the Saturday or Sunday morning following prom night. Wouldn't Matt's home town be the last place on earth Kelly would be found given that it is where he defrauded the Cambodian scholar fund of $25,000 and he has no reason to think that Matt didn't go to the police? Finally, in the end Matt is far too forgiving, if not generous (Matt sends him a box of cigars), to Kelly considering that Kelly a) beat him up; b) drugged him with Ecstasy; c) got him to commit burglary, called the cops on him and abandoned him; d) stole the $25,000 fund for Sam Yung; and e) stole the Adult Education tape.
In summary, notwithstanding the too-numerous plot flaws, this was a fun, entertaining and enjoyable romantic teen comedy featuring very charismatic actors and an all-American feel-good ending.
|
| Rating | | | Date | August 01, 2005 | | Summary | Aimed at Those With a Low Level of Brain Activity | Content
| There is a movie viewer segment of such limited intelligence that they have never been able to experience a movie that actually insulted their intelligence. I understand that "The Girl Next Door" was made as a public service to these viewers and deliberately featured a screenplay so dumbed-down that even those just slightly above the moron level could have their first-ever intelligence insulting viewing experience.
Start with a mix of "Risky Business" and "Can't Hardly Wait", extract all elements of charm that characterized those films, and then dumb-down the story as a public service to the brain-activity challenged members of the audience; and you have a good description of "The Girl Next Door".
But it sure has a nice promotional poster. Elisha Cuthbert looks good posing and she does a decent job playing Elisha Cuthbert (who just happens to be "The Girl Next Door"), but her range as an actress is too narrow to even be measured. Unfortunately for Cuthbert, "This" girl next door (a part most talented young "actresses" would love to play) is supposed to be a multi-dimensional character (for those in the target audience this means that the character is really two different people: "a girl next door" and a "young but hardened by experience porn star"). If you have seen the movie and are still confused don't be embarrassed, nothing in Cuthbert's performance would lead anyone to believe she is a "young but hardened by experience porn star". That is because Cuthbert herself is not a "young but hardened by experience porn star". She would have to "act" differently than "the girl next door" to communicate this dimensionality to the audience. To do this she would have to be an "actress".
So give Cuthbert credit for being able to pose for pictures and for being herself-she seems like a very nice girl that I would welcome as my neighbor. For some people that is enough, for those busy with the experience of having their intelligence insulted for the first time it is probably not important. The rest of us we would be hard pressed to find a worse way to spend our time.
This is your comment, you may delete or edit it. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 07, 2005 | | Summary | Good Movie | Content
| The Girl Next Door rocked it's hilarious. What the movie is about is when a geek/nerd meets his new next door neighbor and they start dating but the relationship is on the rocks when he finds out what she used to do. The acting in this movie was perfec it was a fun and hardcore movie. I highly recommend it. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 04, 2005 | | Summary | Every dorks dream | Content
| Ok so mabey this isnt the most realistic movie ever. But that
does not stop it from being really funny. The casting is really good as Emile Hirsch is a likeable guy and really easy to identify with. Elisha Cuthbert is scorchingly hot! Should I say that again?
Elisha Cuthbert is like, hotter than the sun! She portrays the bad
girl with a vulnurable side really well. So if you want to laugh, check this out. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 01, 2005 | | Summary | If I would've known the girl next door would've been you... | Content
| I wouldn't call it this generation's "Breakfast Club," like another reviewer did here, just for the simple fact that they're two completely different movies. However, I would say that I really enjoyed this movie. So much so that I just want to hug it. It made me talk back to the movie with my gasps of "oh no!" and "hell yeah!" all the way through, which is pretty good in my standards.
I went into this movie pretty hesitant, thinking it was going to be bad but I'm surprised, and kind of glad that I actually enjoyed it. It's a mix between the unrated version of "American Wedding" and any '80s movie. Not to mention Emile Hirsch is absolutely gorgeous as well Elisha Cuthbert. They make a great couple in the film. Sure you have some bad reviews here that make sense, but not enough to bring down the quality of this movie. It's absolutely great to watch. It's a fun movie with a lot of laughs and it's not for those who are too critical to know what a compliment is. It's basically a feel-good movie with a lot of left turns and enough memories in it to make you want to watch it again and again. |
|
Picture 01 (20)
