The Girl Next Door makes a fatal mistake in its first reel. It goes through a sequence several minutes in length, sets up an elaborately (and rather shocking) �how bad can things get?� situation, then� cuts back to a few minutes earlier and reveals that it was all fantasy. The sequence appears so early in the film that the fantasy thing seems likely to be a motif. Will this happen again? This movie is no longer to be trusted. And a lack of trust is especially problematic for a movie like this since its plot relies almost exclusively on similarly implausible, compounding �how bad can things get?� situations. Its difficult to go with anything the movie shows since any bad situation could dissolve to fantasy at any time.
But I suppose this particular fatal mistake is cancelled out by The Girl Next Door�s much more obvious, prevalent fatal mistake, which is its delivery. By the time another such fantasy sequence occurs, you�ll likely be so detached from the film that the its unfair logic won�t even matter. It�ll just be replacing one absurd thing with another in a context that makes less sense than Wild At Heart.
I have to admit that I was intrigued by the advertising campaign for The Girl Next Door. Is it a sex comedy? Is it a coming-of-age drama? Well� it�s both. And neither.
It's certainly one of the most bizarrely delivered movies of the past few years anyway. Really, it�s almost Lynch-ian when you process the actual story underneath it all. The Girl Next Door is a movie almost worth watching just to see how horribly confused and misguided a relatively simple, unexciting concept can possibly get. Except that it�s so boring.
Let�s examine the premise: high school youth befriends sexy new next-door-neighbor. High school youth finds love with sexy new next-door-neighbor. Next-door-neighbor turns out to be a porn star! Boy follows girl into the insane world of the porn industry, escapes in time for his very important speech on why he should get a scholarship to some random prestigious college, boy�s friends take sexy next-door-neighbor�s porn star friends to prom, everything works out in the end. Moderately amusing sex comedy, right?
Wrong. The Girl Next Door is pretty clearly written as a sex comedy, yet is inexplicably directed and edited as a serious coming-of-age drama. It�s a problem so clear so early into the movie that its somewhat phenomenal that such a mistake could plague an entire production without anybody noticing how incredibly fucking wrong this is.
Consequently, The Girl Next Door works on no level. At all. Any humor in the script is entirely usurped by the misguided direction, and any truth in the drama is entirely usurped by the silliness and sheer implausibility of the script. It�s a vicious circle that engulfs the movie to the extent where its badness is almost noble. Except that it�s so boring. You�ll laugh; you�ll cry; you�ll wonder� how long have I been watching this? Is this really still going on?
It is a spectacularly bad movie, utilizing every moment to do exactly what it should not be doing. Leaden pace, terrible scripting, and utterly alien directing, The Girl Next Door is a no-holds-barred assault on everything that makes a movie work. In fact, for the sheer depth of its badness, I�ll give it an extra point. Few other movies have achieved so little. |
