Date: 23 April 2004 Summary: The sweetest R-rated (or 15 certificate) movie in recent memory.
Responsibility for "The Girl Next Door"'s poor performance at the US box
office - as well as over here - can be laid firmly at the feet of Twentieth
Century Fox's marketing people; the tagline "Matt never saw her coming - but
all his friends had!" made it seem like a full-on sex comedy, when it's
actually a lot more than that; director Luke Greenfield and writers Stuart
Blumberg, David T. Wagner and Brent Goldberg put more emphasis on the
characters than the raunch, which makes all the difference. There's more to
the movie than the sight of Elisha Cuthbert in a thong (in interviews she
revealed that it is indeed her there... if not elsewhere in the
movie).
The debt this movie owes to "Risky Business" - starting with the score by
ex-Tangerine Dream member Paul Haslinger (Tangerine Dream scored "Risky
Business") - is pretty clear; both movies have bright but slightly
life-challenged graduate students given to fantasising about things that go
wrong as their main characters (step forward Emile Hirsch as the sympathetic
hero), both have sex-obsessed best friends, both have women in the sex
business as the main female characters who come into the hero's uptight life
and help to liberate him, and both have sleazy male bosses (Timothy Olyphant
plays the Guido equivalent). The movie also has the same mostly restrained
view of its story where other movies would have played up the farce aspects
- the only real hi-jinks come when the movie's plot takes in the Adult Film
Convention in Las Vegas - but "The Girl Next Door" is a lot more engaging
and has a lot more heart than "Risky Business" (good though that movie is,
charm is not its strong point), with the title character seen as more of a
person than a masturbatory object both by our hero and by the movie. When
she goes with a motel with him and starts to play up The Porn Star, you
really hope they don't go through with it.
The mood set up in the early stages is so convincing that when Olyphant's
porn producer character turns up the movie seems to turn into another one
entirely (and if you go to see this because of Elisha's "one for the men"
status, I must warn you that she spends alarming amounts of time
off-screen); it's still a good one, but it damages the overall movie's tone,
and for most of the rest of the movie it veers back and forth between sweet
and sleazy... but the amazing thing is that "The Girl Next Door" actually
manages to find a happy balance of the two by the time the prom climax
arrives (with more echoes of "Risky Business" en route, for
sure).
True, there's no actual sex seen and little nudity, but the cast works so
well and the movie's so sincere that by the end it doesn't seem like a
ripoff. With good use of songs blending with the score, well-done fantasy
sequences, and a welcome dose of intelligence in its writing, "The Girl Next
Door" is probably the most adorable movie to get an R rating since "Pretty
Woman," and well worth seeing even if you don't have a thing for Kim off
"24." But this isn't for the "Daily Sport" crowd. Which is their
loss.
company.
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