This movie is much more than it appears to be.

Rating: 10/10 (20 March 2004)

A surprising movie. It's got some silliness, some convenient answers and some glossing over... but more importantly it has a soul, and that overcomes those weaknesses.
Emile Hirsh plays Matthew, an overachieving "A" student, president of his Senior class and bound for Georgetown University and a big life as a politician down the road. But when he tries to find a way to answer the yearbook question "I will always remember...", he fails miserably. He has nothing to remember, because his life is too static. He watches the jocks, and particularly the girls that the jocks are with, and wishes that he was enjoying this successful life of his a bit more.
And, as tends to happen in movies like this, when he gets his wish, it's almost too much to handle. A beautiful new girl, Danielle (Elisha Cuthbert), moves into the house of her vacationing Aunt next door. Danielle strips in front of her open window--with an amazed Matthew watching from HIS window--and when she turns around and catches him she immediately re-dresses and comes over to confront him in front of his parents. But instead of telling on him, she uses the excuse that she's new in town and needs someone to show her around. Danielle drives Matthew out to a mostly deserted street, kicks him out of the car, and insists HE strip for her.
Matthew does... and over the next few days finds himself increasingly involved with this mysterious girl. For her part, Danielle seems to make it some kind of mission to loosen Matthew up, in a sequence of more and more daring ways.
But for all of Danielle's bad girl ways... she essentially still seems sweet and if not exactly innocent, at least normal. She tells Matt that she's moved away from her old life and is just looking for a new start. But Matt's impressions of her come crashing down when his somewhat sex-obsessed friend, Eli, pulls him aside and shows him a video tape. Matthew's mystery girl is ON the tape. Matthew's girl is a teenaged porno star.
This is all just the setup--not all that deep into the film. The REAL plot of the movie--the real heart--builds on this with how Matt deals with his new knowledge about Danielle, how Danielle deals with Matt, and what the film tries to tell us about who these people really are, as opposed to who they are expected to be. Matt's pretty future comes crashing down around him, and Danielle's past threatens them both in the form of her former boyfriend/"producer" Kelly (Timothy Olyphant).
The film is more reminiscent of "Fast Times At Ridgemont High" or "Risky Business" than more "modern" teen films like "American Pie" or even the wave of John Hughes films which came between these two. Sex is ever-present, although the film is not explicit--with the exception of a few pairs of breasts in a strip club and some strong language and suggestion. And the sex trades are neither panned nor lauded, although there are certainly implications that the teenaged Danielle has been exploited, and desperately needs to get out. The moral center of the film has nothing to do with pornography though, it has much more to do with sacrifice, friendship, and the desire to better yourself. And if it gets a bit heavy-handed near the end with some of this... it's given you enough to laugh and think about up to that point to deserve some leeway.
Of particular note in this film is Elisha Cuthbert, who does surprisingly more than her fairly wooden performance as Kim on "24". Danielle could have been a glossy fantasy girl, played without depth or warmth, but Cuthbert brings both in spades. Rather than be disgusted or even just excited by Danielle and her choices, Cuthbert allows us to see what it cost her, what she's managed to regain from Matthew, and what she fears losing again. It's a deep performance which is more the actress than the script, and it doesn't hurt that she plays the sexy parts extremely well too.
Also great is Chris Marquette, as Eli, who will give you quite a shock with his performance if all you know him from is his slightly sacharine role as Adam on "Joan of Arcadia".