Review of The Boy Next Door (2015) by Ashley M — 08 Mar 2015

This is not a good movie. This is not even acceptable as a piece of film. What it is, however, is pure entertainment, inadvertently or not. Opening with what must be one of the lousiest marriage-on-the-rocks montages in recent history, The Boy Next Door then proceeds to establish its outlandishly preposterous plot with such magnificent stupidity one can only watch in awe. There are perhaps too many implausibilities in this movie to count, from the idea that nearly 30 year old Guzman is playing a high school student to the idea that their son, now fully into his weirdly homo-erotic relationship with the titular character, has some sort of allergic reaction to boxing (?). From a tiny $4m budget, around half of this seems to have gone on making Lopez seem around half her age which primarily dilutes the plot by making both the leads seem pretty similarly aged. You will now see that this is a stupendously dumb movie. There's more. The now infamous "Iliad" quote has perhaps been bandied around on the internet enough nowadays but I will not refrain from howling every time I think about this godawful scene, its inherent awkwardness and Guzman's line reading of "dude, you gotta read the Illiad." There are numerous Greek tragedy references littered sporadically throughout the movie in fact, particularly Oedipal, that are just purely nonsensical. And to return to those pesky lines, it's safe to assume the screenplay won't be winning any Academy Awards soon. Aside from the notorious ones ("I love your mother's cookies" etc), The Boy Next Door features endlessly quotable classics, towered triumphantly by Guzman's retort to Lopez asking him to leave her alone ("I can't Claire...I live next door"). Oh my.

Perhaps this wasn't a comedy. I did indeed get some weary looks from my fellow audience members by my 150th chuckle when I saw the movie at my local multiplex. Taken as a serious thriller, this is truly appalling. Filled with terrible one-note characters (Lopez's glasses-wielding-because-she's-working-you-see glamorous teacher, Guzman's mysterious teen/man with a 20 second flashback worthy backstory and Chenoweth's sassy best friend type character from all movies circa. 1980), dreadful dialogue, woeful literature references, awkward set pieces and utterly derivative. As a low rent B-movie thriller with the sheer intention of evoking laughter, however, this is world-class. By the time the final shamefully predictable eye-gouging scene plays out, I'm exhausted for breath from laughing. This is pure, unabashed trash that crosses the line into so-bad-it's-good within the first 10 minutes. This is a movie you watch ironically or maybe even take as a cutting edge and razor sharp parody of the erotic thriller genre (exhibit A: the awfully clinical and sterile sex scene). Regarded as one of these things, The Boy Next Door excels and does so with a knowing wink that will hopefully inspire a renaissance of this sort of bad film some time soon.