The Girl Next Door

That girl is gorgeous and just look at that bod, Matthew thinks as he walks into a garbage can out side his house.

Later, while Matthew is upstairs in his bedroom when he sees her, in the house next door, through his window and she's UNDRESSING! Just as she finishes taking off the last piece, she turns around quickly and looks Matthew straight in the face. A shy and shocked Matthew quickly ducks below the window sill and after a minute, slowly, ever so slowly, peeks over the sill but the girl is gone.

Just then Matthew (Emile Hirsch) hears the doorbell ring and his parents call for him. He comes out of the bedroom and there with his parents is the girl. "Oh Oh" he thinks "She's telling them I'm a voyeur, a Peeping Tom". The girl, Danielle is her name, has a Cheshire smile on her face, then his mother says Danielle is new in town and wonders if you could show her around town.

Unknown to Matthew, who is the not so popular class president in high school and about to graduate, is that Danielle (Elisha Cuthbert) has been in pornographic films and is trying to break away from the business. This fact is thrust upon Matthew by one of his nerdy friends, Eli (Chris Marquette), who is obsessed with pornography, when he begins to show him one of Danielle's films.

So begins The Girl Next Door A racy teenage comedy directed by Luke Greenberg and written by screenwriters David Wagner and Brent Goldberg, which bounces back and forth between Matthew's High School, when he has earned new found credibility because of his foxy new girlfriend and the annual Pornography Convention in - where else - Las Vegas in a tug of war for Danielle with Kelly (Timothy Olyphant), her former adult film producer with designs of landing her back in front of the camera.

Conclusion

I liked this film but I didn't love it. The story was clever and some of the situations were funny but I found the subject matter a little distasteful. This is supposed to be a comedy, after all and I fail to see anything humorous about making skin flicks. I don't want to seem like a prude, after all I've watched my share of both hard and soft porn movies and have reviewed several erotic movies on this site. A comedic porn movie I might be able to get into but there just seems to be something unseemly about a comedy about the porn industry, like it's being glorified or something.

Now I'll get off my soapbox and talk about the movie. I had only seen the two lead actors before and they had both played petulant, surly teenagers, Hirsch as the troublesome son of a senator in one of my favorite movies The Emperors Club http://www.epinions.com/content_122894126724 and Cuthbert as the querulous daughter in the TV series 24 Hours http://www.epinions.com/content_151626026628 . My impression of both actors has improved with this movie. Neither was great but they performed in a yeomanship manner and despite the subject matter their characters were upbeat and impressive. Cuthbert has blossomed from the temperamental child/woman of 24 Hours into a very attractive and sensuous actress. I look forward to more work from both actors. Another bright spot was the kinky quirky acting of Timothy Olyphant. One minute a friend the next an enemy, he played the part to a tee. Cheers for Olyphant. Matthews two nerdy sidekicks also gave good performances

There is a R Rated version and an unrated version. I watched the unrated version which had some nudity (surprise) but only in cameo appearances from minor actresses and at the porn convention. That's right, only girls, no guys. Sorry, girls, equal rights hasn't progressed that far.

Despite the fact that this is a so called “teen comedy”, you might want to keep any teens under, say seventeen away from the racy unrated version.

Overall I found the movie to be entertaining despite my admonitions. Final rating a low four stars @ 3.6