The Girl Next Door

The Girl Next Door (2004) is a high school comedy built on one idea: the model student discovers his new neighbour is a former adult film actress. Matthew is eighteen, class president, chasing a scholarship, and has never done anything. Danielle moves in next door. They grow close, then he learns about her past and wrecks everything with his reaction. The first half works. That Matthew has followed the rules his whole life and gained nothing from it is a real subject, and the comedy comes from there. The second half drops into the genre's usual furniture: the missed exam, the lost money, the last minute rescue. The film's view of Danielle is also a problem. She is constructed as a prize rather than a character and presented as someone needing rescue from her past, and that framing has aged badly. The producer played by Timothy Olyphant is the liveliest thing in it; the register lifts every time he appears. It did poorly on release and built its audience later through television repeats. It runs 110 minutes. Good for: 2000s high school comedy, nostalgia, and light viewing. Less good for: the sexual content is heavy, the adult film industry is presented far too brightly, and the treatment of the female lead is contested.