Surprisingly Old Fashioned...

Rating: 7/10 (10 August 2004)

The recent glut of 90's gross out teen movies has just received another member into its fold. However, while the likes of Road Trip and American Pie may be welcomed with open arms and encouraging pats on the back, The Girl Next Door is more likely to be greeted with a non committal handshake and a couple of suspicious sideways glances. You see, this movie, despite its flaws (and there are plenty) manages to possess something that so many similar films lack. Namely? A heart.
I will admit to not being averse to a bit of gross out humour. While such gags as those in the American Pie movies are hardly high art, they at least draw a belly laugh from the audience now and then. I went in to The Girl Next Door with the opinion that this was going to be another attempt by Hollywood to follow the now successful American Pie recipe. Throw a bunch of attractive twenty something's into a film to play characters up to ten years their juniors, add a couple of party scenes, a vaguely pop/rock soundtrack and plenty of bodily fluids. Leave to bake until a nice golden brown before serving to the viewing public.
Imagine my surprise then, when I found The Girl Next Door to be more akin to some of the classic teen movies of the 1980's, in particular the early Tom Cruise vehicle Risky Business. While it never quite reaches the balance or sharpness of some of those films, it nevertheless manages to stand aloof from its more modern brethren, and dare I say it, perhaps a touch higher as well.
Young Matthew Kidman (played by Emile Hirsch) is coming to the end of his High School life. He's a straight A student who aims to succeed in everything he does. Needless to say, he has also kept to the straight and narrow, and now that his High School days are coming to a close he's beginning to feel that he may have missed out on the wilder side of his youth. All this will change however when the gorgeous Danielle begins house sitting next door (24's Elisha Cuthbert). The pair spark up a relationship as the more confident and free spirited Danielle tries to help Matthew discover what he's been missing out on all these years.
It is in this early portion of the film that The Girl Next Door most resembles some of its classic predecessors. The cast mesh exceedingly well together, Hirsch and Cuthbert providing stand out performances that really elevate the movie beyond its somewhat mundane early premise. Hirsch's Matthew is a wonderfully balanced character who is both intelligent, and yet occasionally astonishingly naïve. It also makes a nice change that despite his relatively buttoned down lifestyle, Matthew can hardly be described as a geek. Cuthbert puts in a wonderful turn as Danielle providing the character with a more down to earth feel than many of the similar characters in other movies, and succeeds in making the audience understand why Matthew falls for her the way he does. Also of note is Chris Marquette as Matthew's terminally horny and pornography obsessed friend Eli.
It's hardly hiding any major plot twist to say that Danielle is somewhat more than she first appears. Eli's viewing habits quickly uncover the fact that she is a porn star and it's with this revelation that the movie loses its way somewhat. The plot line becomes increasingly dense and convoluted as it tries to tie together numerous plot strands and only half succeeding. The introduction of Timothy Olyphant (best known as the drug dealer Tod from Go) as Danielle's producer and ex boyfriend Kelly also proves to be both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because Olyphant was born to play these kind of laid back, cool yet sleazy types, and effortlessly manages to steal every scene he's in, a curse for almost exactly the same reason. Kelly quickly becomes one of the movie's major driving forces and his efforts to keep the two apart practically supplant the increasingly awkward romance of Danielle and Matthew. The dramatic decrease in Cuthbert's actual screen time in the movies second act only serves to hammer this fact home. At roughly an hour and forty minutes, the film is also a little long. Comedies should never really run above an hour and a half, and this one could easily have been condensed if some of the extraneous plot elements had been dropped.
However, despite struggling under its own weight in the second act, director Luke Greenfield manages to pull everything together for what is ultimately a fun and satisfying conclusion. The final twist to the story is wonderful and the last scenes manage to tread that oh so fine line between cool touching sentiment and cloying mushiness.
The Girl Next door is ultimately a film that aspires to loftier goals than so many of its contemporaries. It strives to tug at your heart and truly make you feel for the characters involved. That it by and large succeeds in that goal is a testament to the movie. However the fact that it loses its bottle halfway through and throws in a series of unnecessary and often distracting plot lines to try and compensate for a deficiency that quite frankly didn't exist in the first place is all the more saddening. Those waiting for a classic modern teen movie to rank up there with films like Say Anything and The Breakfast Club will unfortunately have to wait just that little bit longer.