Strictly for the Those with Low Brain Activity

Rating: 3/10 (15 May 2005)

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.