“The Boy Next Door” is not in the least a great movie, but it is most certainly an enjoyable one.
Though I may be tempted to award “The Boy Next Door” five stars based on the sheer enjoyment I received from watching it, I cannot in good faith do so out of respect for film technique and competence in general. Still, I can highly recommend it.
“The Boy Next Door” provides a pure, concentrated source of guilty pleasure. Its indulgent sex scenes, inexplicable sense of humor and sudden descent into self-immolation and excessive gore in the third act make the movie simultaneously wonderful and absurd.
Though Jennifer Lopez doesn’t exactly do her best acting here (her performance as faux J. Lo on “American Idol” trumps every other role she’s played), she relishes the opportunity to play foolish and long-suffering Claire Peterson, a recently single mother who’s struggling in her love life. Enter Noah Sandborn (Ryan Guzman), the titular “Boy Next Door.”
The conflict between Claire and Noah is nebulous, and often one may wonder whether it deserves to drive the plot at all. The two share a brief, intimate encounter in one of the more unrealistic sex scenes I’ve seen, and Noah becomes obsessed. This is fine and logical enough.
However, Claire’s motivation to keep their tryst secret, even after things become increasingly dangerous for her and her family, is much more difficult to grasp; especially seeing as Noah essentially coerces Claire into sleeping with him. He takes advantage of and asserts power over a drunken woman, but somehow it’s her fault. The movie frames it as such, at least to begin with.
To this end, Noah isn’t under 18 years old, and he certainly doesn’t look it; Guzman’s own 27 years don’t fit too well into the mold of his 19-year-old character. In addition, he joins her English class and becomes her student only after the whole event. It becomes less of a student-teacher forbidden affair and more of a “cougars are taboo” thing, which is rather offensive on the whole.
The barrier of age as an initial conflict is confused additionally by the lack of reasonable age on Jennifer Lopez’s face. The edited-in blurs intended to scrape away any sign of natural maturity (because Heaven forbid Lopez look older than 30) can be distracting, and they are ultimately insulting to the actress herself.
For people who still like Kristin Chenoweth, she’s in the movie, filling the positions of mandatory best friend, convenient plot device and cheap stunt setup for the climax. She also serves as the movie’s attempt at comic relief, though many of her jokes fall flat. Ian Nelson portrays Claire’s son, who is perhaps the only likable character in the movie.
“The Boy Next Door” transitions gracefully from self-seriousness to not caring at all after its first act. The lack of research is astounding and probably intentional. My personal favorite example of the movie’s ineptitude and flippancy is Noah presenting Claire with a “first edition of ‘The Iliad,’” an item that would have to be more than 2,700 years old, which he claims to have bought from a garage sale. Also notable is the movie’s overall lack of a general knowledge of how allergies work.
The movie is littered with dropped plot points, bizarre decisions and faulty logic, and is laughable all the way through. Suffice to say, any movie that features Jennifer Lopez plunging an EpiPen into someone’s eye and then subsequently gouging out that same eye will receive a thumbs-up from me.
