Much more than Risqué Business.

Rating: 8/10 (6 November 2006)

Billed on the cover as "American Pie meets Risky Business" you'd expect The Girl Next Door to be one of the mindless teen comedies so ubiquitous in today's market. Typically I wouldn't have given this DVD a second look, but I like Elisha Cuthbert so I picked it up.
Not that this is a film destined to change the course of cinematic history, but it IS considerably more thoughtful than most of its genre. Yes, we know before the first scene opens what's going to happen. This is not just boy-meets-girl, this is more like boy-meets-fantasy-girl and if you've ever been an 18-year-old boy, or even known one for more than 15 minutes you can see what's coming. The only question is going to be how, right? Not really. What you won't see coming is a surprisingly poignant performance by Cuthbert as the girl jaded far beyond her years. The character Danielle is a vulnerable girl guarded by the brittle hard edge of a veteran of the adult film industry. But when she meets Matthew (Emile Hirsch) who knows her only as Danielle, the house-sitting niece of his next door neighbor she lets down her guard in the hope that she can reinvent herself in this smallish town where she's an unknown.
It probably would have worked too if not for the meddling influence of one of Matthew's friends, Eli (Chris Marquette). Eli, it seems, is plugged into the world of porn and reveals Danielle's secret to Matthew.
At the prodding of his friends, Matthew makes his play to bed the beautiful Danielle. A gambit that is as endearingly clumsy as it is predictable. But it is here that Cuthbert renders what -- for me -- is the defining moment of the film. And she does it in one word.
The word is "Okay", and is delivered in response to Matthew's suggestion that they get a room. In that moment, in that one word, we see Danielle pull back from Matthew and resign herself to the idea that she will never be anything more than the porn queen she was back in the big city. She sheds no tears, and she makes no sign that she knows that he's found her out until later. But in that one moment, we see the hope of the re-invention of Danielle evaporate in a way that's nearly palpable.
In the real world, this would have been the end of the movie. Lucky for us, this isn't the real world and Matthew somehow manages to mature enough in the next few scenes to attempt a comeback.
The details of the comeback are a source of great amusement including a break-in at the home of a big time producer, crashing the adult entertainment convention in Las Vegas, and showing up to deliver a speech to a scholarship committee after being slipped a dose of Ecstacy.
Ultimately, we can see that the two will eventually sort things out and they do. Though the way they do it is something of a surprise that I'll leave for the movie to tell you about.
If you liked Risky Business, The Breakfast Club, Ridgemont High, and the rest of this class, you'll like The Girl Next Door. If you LOVED those films, you might NOT like The Girl Next Door. Ardent fans of mindless comedy might find this film a little too deep for their tastes. And if you're expecting borderline soft core porn, you're going to be disappointed. While the film does contain some nudity (it would have been almost impossible for it NOT to) it's hardly chock full of gratuitous sex.
In the end, Cuthbert's character is compelling (more so than even her later versions of Kim Bauer on TV's "24") and Hirsch is the perfect foil for her. This is a movie worth seeing -- a rare feat in modern Hollywood.