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chapter11 [ 7.5 ]
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See? And i'd come all prepared to hate it. But, somehow, "The Girl Next Door" managed to win me over fairly easily. Maybe it was the ludicrously nostalgic opening scene set to Queen's "Under Pressure," or maybe it was the coy humor with which Emile Hirsch and Elisha Cuthbert's first meeting was handled, or perhaps Hirsch's geeky, horny best friends ringing all-too-true .. but "The Girl Next Door" is much funnier, sweeter, and more entertaining than I'd have ever given it credit for from the trailers. Elisha Cuthbert (who is not just plain ol' hot but BURNING HEART OF THE SUN hot) and Timothy Olyphant (too funny for words as a charming porn king) all but make the movie.
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scottwblack [ 3.5 ]
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Begins as an adolescent male wish-fulfillment fantasy (the gorgeous girl next door is a porn star, baby, and she wants me!) and then detours into slighty more dangerous, Something Wild territory with the arrival of Timothy Olyphant as said porn star's "producer." Obviously wants to be Risky Business for a new generation, but it lacks the high style and coherent narrative of that film. What some critics were thinking when they lauded this is beyond me.
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babyduck [ 7.0 ]
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As it's squarely in the "teeny booper" genre I thought it was perfectly cast. Elisha Cuthbert is yummy!
I thought the creepy porn producer aspect was a bit too creepy which should have been a light fluffy teen romantic comedy, but I guess the ending redeems that aspect of the film.
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DokBrowne [ 8.5 ]
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I loves me some teen romantic comedies, and all the merrier if one actually tries to be original. Though it's hard to avoid them all, this movie makes up for its small flaws (an attention to characters yet a lack of complexity or depth to their personalities) with a bright, winning sense of intelligent good will. Ultimately, one's opinion of it may be influenced by his/her own outlook on life, I suspect. Real cynics and nitpicking critics will not like some of the far-fetched scenarios the plot veers toward, nor will prudes be able to accept the implications of underage pornography and statutory rape. It's nowhere near as inappropriate as that sounds, however. The movie's basically "boy and girl fall in love" formula coupled with "high school life" per Emile Hirsch's angst over graduating an unfulfilled man and given a spin with the whole "girl was a porn star and her past is coming back to haunt her" angle, only there's something refreshing about it. Maybe it's in the attitude - Hirsch is an ambitious and successful student, but as the cliche goes, he needs to experience life as a human being in order to reach a certain idealized (and perhaps unrealistic, but still neat) post-graduate self-actualization. A well-rounded readiness to attack the rest of his life. The movie manages to reflect the wistfulness, pathos, and ambition during certain key moments while still dealing with its wacky gimmick plot, which of course has everything to do with the theme (the script's rather blunt about girl next door Elisha Cuthbert being Hirsch's savior) on top of being a deliciously sweet slice of love story.
Making it a full-blown great movie in my own whimsical, easy-to-please mind are 3 factors: 1) Elisha Cuthbert, who is officially one of the hottest women alive on earth (as that was clearly the movie's goal) and could kill a man with the perfection of her smile; 2) Timothy Olyphant, a long-time favorite of mine who not only finally gets another fun role after a couple years of banality ("Gone in 60 Seconds", "Dreamcatcher", and he was a treat in "A Man Apart" but the movie was so awful I hardly remember him in it), but basically plays the same character that made me love him in the first place. The "Go" (and to a much lesser extent "Scream 2") character of sleazy and potentially dangerous underworld Mr. Cool. God I love him; 3) the blazingly happy ending, set to The Who's magnificent "Baba O'Reilly" (a song that truly belongs as the uplifting coda to a movie like this, despite its depressing lyrics). To bathe in the happy endings to good movies is why I was born, and if you're anything like me, you'll be in ecstasy during the last couple minutes of this one. The movie has a lot of parallels to my own life (even though I'm no longer in high school), so I can almost sorta apply the outcome to myself (at least its mechanics if not the specifics) and hope that someday I can make my own happy ending and that it'll be a little something like this
I'm really lame, I know
I am gonna make this movie when I get to Hollywood. So if you hate "The Girl Next Door", you'll be relieved that I'll never have the talent or gumption to fulfill that dream. Sigh...
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jeff_v [ 3.5 ]
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A half-baked rehash of Risky Business, with sloppy screenwriting (the relationship between the two leads is established so flimsily that it's never believable as a catalyst for the ensuing action), short-attention span music syndrome (there must be a hundred samples from songs thrown in whenever the inept direction fails to make a scene work on its own), and just too few laughs. Timothy Olyphant is awesome though.
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| Weighted Rating | : 6.2 |
| No. Ratings | : 9 | |
| No. Reviews | : 5 | |
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