The Girl Next Door Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)March 8th, 2004
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People who managed a sneak peek at The Girl Next Door are relentlessly comparing it to teen classics of yore. And rightfully so, as The Girl deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Say Anything, Clueless and Election in terms of Movies That Helped Define a Generation. Shocking? Yes (we'll get to why a little later on in the show). Many cinematically link The Girl with Risky Business as well, but I found it to be equally akin (if not more so) to Jonathan Demme's Something Wild.
In Wild, a milquetoast Joe (Jeff Daniels) is taken on a series of dangerous adventures by a sexy woman (Melanie Griffith) with a penchant for making rash decisions just for the hell of it and, eventually, finds himself in perilous conflict with her man (Ray Liotta). In The Girl, the stiff is Matthew Kidman (Emile Hirsch, The Emperor's Club), the Georgetown-bound class president at a high school where he's practically invisible amongst the loudmouth jocks and cheerleaders. Even though Matthew has raised $25,000 to "rescue" a brilliant but impoverished Cambodian teen and has been shortlisted to receive a desperately needed college scholarship, he realizes he doesn't have one lasting memory of doing anything fun during his four-year stint in high school.
Enter Danielle, the hottest girl in the world (played by the hottest girl in the world, Elisha Cuthbert), who is house-sitting for an aunt who happens to live right next door to Matthew. The two meet really cute and strike up a fast friendship rooted in Danielle's numerous "just go with it" attempts to pull Matthew out of his shell and into the real world. It works, and as the fledgling couple approaches the notion of taking their relationship to a higher level, a bombshell is dropped: Matthew's porn-obsessed friend Eli (Chris Marquette, Joan of Arcadia) discovers Danielle is actually a star of films geared toward adult entertainment. What's more, her scary producer/pimp Kelly (Timothy Olyphant, A Man Apart) shows up in town to haul his bukkake queen back into the business.
What follows is Matthew's attempt to reconcile the genuine feelings he has for Danielle with a loathing of what she's done (and a fear of what Kelly might do to him). It's incredibly sweet, crass as all get out, and the twisty-type ending even misted me up a little bit. So how did this happen? How does a film directed by Luke Greenfield (The Animal) and written by David T. Wagner and Brent Goldberg (Van Wilder, My Baby's Daddy) manage to be this entertaining and have its release pushed back a month after testing through the roof following a national sneak preview?
Here's one theory: Greenfield made The Animal to get his foot in the door (he already had an award-winning short under his belt), and, together with co-writer Stuart Blumberg (Keeping the Faith), polished up what would have been a script for another throwaway teen sex romp. The two went at it like a pair of Cameron Crowes, injecting The Girl with youthful enthusiasm and a string of infectious songs that won't date the film when you watch it in 2024 (unlike, say, Shrek). The music is all over the map - The Who, Mogwai, Filter, Marvin Gaye, Sloan, Muddy Waters and David Gray - but it all fits perfectly, and that's something that really gets my juices flowing.
The Girl is the movie that's going to make Hirsch a star (he practically channels Arnie Grape in scenes where he's accidentally taken a couple of Ecstasy tablets) and Cuthbert even more of a spank fantasy (she doesn't have as much to do, other than looking like the Holy Grail of women). There are minor things to nitpick, like aping Risky Business a little too much (the music used to create tension is almost identical, as is the sex scene which is now transplanted from the train to a limo) and having some pretty decent but largely inconsequential plot holes.
And how could you not love a movie which contains, if you look really closely, a couple of scenes with David Daskal, the professional nerd who should have won Average Joe: Hawaii?
1:49 - R for strong sexual content, language and some drug/alcohol use
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