The Girl Next Door (2004)
Directed by Luke Greenfield
Exceptionally ambitious high schooler Matthew has aspirations for a career in politics when he falls in love with his gorgeous 19-year-old neighbor, Danielle. But Matthew's bright future is jeopardized when he finds Danielle was once a porn star. As Danielle's past catches up with her, Matthew's love for her forces him to re-evaluate his goals.
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10 films that influenced The Girl Next Door
What critics say influenced The Girl Next Door
It also enhanced the bad girl/good boy template in ways whose ripples have been felt in Hollywood for decades, with The Girl Next Door often being referred to as "Risky Business for the next generation."
Seen from an angle, this pop art reveals more thematic riskiness than its cinematic offspring, most obviously the films of John Hughes (whose Ferris Bueller caricatures Risky Business while shamelessly ripping off its jaw-dropping automotive sacrifice) and Luke Greenfield's The Girl Next Door.
But unfortunately there's no one to prosecute in the case of "The Girl Next Door," which seems mainly about ripping off 1983's "Risky Business" without attribution, right down to its awkward teenage hero's tighty whities.
As directed by Luke Greenfield from a script by Stuart Blumberg, David Wagner and Brent Goldberg, "The Girl Next Door" is a coming-of-age movie that borrows liberally from one of the most influential films of the genre - "Risky Business."
A character-driven, cleverly risqué teen sex farce that has much more in common with "Risky Business" (the genre's high-water mark) than it does with the lowbrow body-fluid antics of the post- "American Pie" era, "The Girl Next Door" stars eye-popping Elisha Cuthbert (from TV's "24") as every nerdy teenager's dream come true: an alluringly sexy, accessibly sweet porn star who's just looking for a nice, normal boyfriend.
In tone and temperament, The Girl Next Door owes a greater debt to films like Risky Business than to the Animal House-inspired comedies that have grown in popularity over the last five years.
Like Melanie Griffith's reckless, self-indulgent character in Something Wild, Danielle is a catalyst for change in Matthew's uninteresting life.
And every once in a while, director Luke Greenfield (forever stuck listing Rob Schneider's "The Animal" as his feature filmmaking debut) manages something a little bit bold and surprisingly inspired.
Perhaps they simply express the tastes and interests of the filmmakers in which case, there's more to director Luke Greenfield than I'd have ever thought based on The Animal, or to screenwriters Brent Goldberg and David Wagner (in light of Van Wilder, My Baby's Daddy and Saving Ryan's Privates).
Director Luke Greenfield has only The Animal on his resume — yes, the Rob Schneider movie — but to his credit, he seems to realize that the glory of Risky Business is its discordant tone, which he tries to replicate.
Director Luke Greenfield ("The Animal") has evoked a sweetly confused but determined performance from romantic lead Hirsch and hilarious but completely different character portrayals from strong supporters Chris Marquette ("Freddy vs. Jason") and Paul Dano ("Taking Lives") as Matthew's best buds Eli and Klitz.
This is something usually reserved for the filmmaker who considers himself an auteur, not the director of Rob Schneider's "The Animal."
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"The Girl Next Door" is a movie full of contradictions that plays like a bad "The Sure Thing" melded uncomfortably together with an exploitative "Risky Business."
The girls have their princess movies, the boys their visits to the Traci Lords Tutoring School, with Cuthbert's porn star making Julia Roberts' Pretty Woman look like a filthy degenerate by comparison.
Luke Greenfield, breaking from Rob Schneider vehicles, has directed a smart teen flick comparable to Fast Times at Ridgemont High and The Last American Virgin in its presentation of high school as a dungeon of sexual self-torture for everyone who isn't a lettered jock.
Risky Business has the guts to take the teen sex comedy all the way, so to speak — it's the experienced older brother to Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
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A character-driven, cleverly risqué teen sex farce that has much more in common with "Risky Business" (the genre's high-water mark) than it does with the lowbrow body-fluid antics of the post- "American Pie" era, "The Girl Next Door" stars eye-popping Elisha Cuthbert (from TV's "24") as every nerdy teenager's dream come true: an alluringly sexy, accessibly sweet porn star who's just looking for a nice, normal boyfriend.
Unlike American Pie, it does not rely upon bawdy antics and bodily fluids.
The final insurmountable problem is that writers Stuart Blumberg ("Keeping the Faith") and David Wagner and Brent Goldberg (the team that brought you "National Lampoon's Van Wilder") really come up short when things get serious, resorting to cliches and a whole lot of hooey about "moral fiber."
Initially penned by the crass team behind "Van Wilder" and "My Baby's Mama," but given more polish and panache by screenwriter Stuart Blumberg ( "Keeping the Faith" ), "The Girl Next Door" does follow a fairly predictable path as Matthew loses his inhibitions and, eventually, his virginity.
Story creators Stuart Blumberg and David T. Wagner ("Van Wilder, Saving Ryan's Privates") have, with screenwriter Brent Goldberg ("Keeping the Faith"), reached back twenty years to 1983's "Risky Business" and updated it for the Internet age.