God-Awful

Rating: Null/10 (5 February 2004)

The Girl Next Door might be even worse than it looks. By watching the trailor, you think, "Oh man that looks pretty bad". Well frankly you have no idea. This flick starts out as a sappy gimmick-romance, turns into some kind of dumb porno-heist, and then eventually ends up as a pretentious slice of the American dream. Puh-leeze. I really want to contact director Luke Greenfeild and tell him that just because you add a whole 2nd plot to your movie, making it seem hours longer than it needs to be, and then in the conclusion play Baba O'Reily while a medley shows how your protagonists end up, that doesn't make your movie a coming-of-age epic.
I guess it hurts worse that it wasn't funny. You can forgive Old School for the mediocrity of its serious side because the film happened to be hilarious. The Girl Next Door--apart from an amusing performance by Timothy Olyphant--is almost completely devoid of any funny material. Which leaves you to hope that the movie will be good in other ways... which it isn't. God, it was awful. I mean really bad.