The Boy Next Door ** (2015, Jennifer Lopez, Ryan Guzman, John Corbett, Kristin Chenoweth, Ian Nelson) – Movie Review

Hell hath no fury like a man scorned, apparently. The Boy Next Door is quite a bad movie, but it’s still quite enjoyable and good, guilty-pleasure fun. One day it may even be in the so bad it’s good category. The first third is promising, characterful and suspenseful, then unintentional laughs set in as credibility flies out of the window.

Jennifer Lopez finds a reasonable role for her as Claire, a newly separated mother with a teenage son (Ian Nelson), an unfaithful ex (John Corbett) who won’t quite give up on her and a friend in waspish high school vice-principal Vicky (Kristin Chenoweth). The only unreasonable thing about her role is that she’s supposed to be a teacher of classical literature at the local high school – and J-Lo just doesn’t suggest teacher of the classics. But, never mind, she gets the glasses on to read, and looks the part.

Graduating, or maybe taking a step up from the Step Up movies, Ryan Guzman, 27, playing 19, co-stars as a handsome, charming-seeming teenager named Noah who moves in next door. He quickly insinuates himself into Claire’s life and that of her son Kevin. It isn’t long before Claire is encouraging Noah’s friendship and indulging in a little bit of flirtation.

[Spoiler alert] However, one night, Claire gives in to temptation and lets Noah seduce her but, when she tries to end their sexual relationship, he turns violent.

Yes, it’s Fatal Attraction again, but with the boy as the bunny boiler, and that’s fine. It’s all about how well you can do it to make it come up fresh and exciting, and maybe even a bit credible, though that’s an extra. Director Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious, xXx) doesn’t seem to know what to do with the ‘fresh exciting or credible’ bits, and nor does screenwriter Barbara Curry.

The ‘is Noah a nutter or not?’ thing needs to be drawn out at least to two thirds through the story, or it has nowhere to go except its inevitable anti-climactic end. Here Noah starts to be violent and crazy about a third in to the film’s neat 90 minutes. This leaves the actor stranded. Guzman obliges by showing off his hunkilicious body, and tries to compensate for the shaky writing by over-acting  wildly and way too crazy, way too soon. Don’t blame Guzman. It’s not his fault, it’s the writer and director’s fault in not controlling their situation and their actor.

Guzman has the best part of course, but it’s the hardest. J-Lo just has the reacting to do, like Michael Douglas in Fatal Attraction, until the very end. J-Lo is fine, though I’m guessing she doesn’t look like any middle-aged high school teacher. Guzman’s Noah is demonised, after all he’s far too handsome to live, but we don’t really care about him and his fate like we do if it’s a woman like Glenn Close who is scorned by a cheating man.

It’s also not Guzman’s fault that he’s nearly a decade too old for his role. That’s the casting director’s fault. He doesn’t look like a high schooler – weedy Ian Nelson does. Guzman looks like a male model. That takes away a lot from reality, and the frisson of seeing the 45-year-old middle-aged J-Lo fall for and make torrid love with a much younger boy and be punished for it when he turns nasty – and he’s her son’s friend, and becomes her student! As she says, she’s the adult and shouldn’t have done it.

Still, trashy though the movie really is, it’s entirely painless and watchable. Fans of junky thrillers will probably be entirely happy as the 90 minutes whizz cheerfully by.

Lopez filmed her own sex scenes for the film, saying she found them very awkward to do with Guzman, who said he was plagued by nerves when shooting the scenes and especially nervous about doing his first nude scene.

Hilariously, Noah brings Claire a copy of The Iliad, which she says she can’t accept as it is a ‘first edition’. Homer’s 3,000-year-old ancient Greek poem was passed down orally and the oldest, complete manuscript dates from the 10th century. The ‘first edition’ Noah gives to Claire is hardback, brand new and written in English!

It was shot quickly and cheaply in just 25 days on a budget of about $4million, so its US box office of $35million makes it a very nice little earner.

It is Barbara Curry’s first filmed screenplay. She has a degree in law and one in screenwriting from UCLA. She was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in downtown Los Angeles for nearly a decade, working in the Major Violent Crimes Unit on federal cases that included murder-for-hire, prison murder, racketeering, arson, kidnapping, and bank robbery.

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© Derek Winnert 2015 Movie Review

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