MOVIE REVIEW - The Boy Next Door

For some reason Jennifer Lopez decided to produce, and star in this horrible derailment of a movie, The Boy Next Door.

There is a rumored interesting back story on this movie. Word is, it was filmed in only 25 days and came in at about 4 million to make. Unheard of today, where the average budget is about 40 million or so. This movies story was inspired too by some high profile cases nationally where female teachers have affairs with their students in high school.

Let's recap this nonsense.  Claire (Lopez) is a high school classic literature teacher.  She is married to Garrett (John Corbett), but they are separated because of his lying, cheating ways.  They have a son named Kevin who is a nice kid, but is bullied at the same school where Claire teaches. There's this new kid that moves in next door to Claire named Noah (Ryan Guzman).  He seems like a nice kid, but he's not.

Noah is almost 20,  has not finished high school so he's back in Claire's school to finish up after the death of his parents.   He's a handsome kid, who has his sights on the jilted Claire.  Then one rainy, stormy night, after Claire has a few glasses of wine, they end up sleeping together in Noah's uncles house.  Of course, this is a huge problem on so many levels, not the least of which is that Noah is a nut job who becomes this horrible stalker goof as Claire comes to her senses when the sun comes up and she tells him it all was a mistake.

So the stalking is on. Noah starts causing all kind of serious trouble from the small to the amazingly illegal.  He even tries to kill all of the rivals involved, and goes completely off the deep end, because he can't have Claire.  And much of this is laughable, and most of this is predictable and all of this is terrible.  With all this, no one thinks to call the cops- not even once.  Also, we are supposed to believe that Lopez is a jilted, low self-esteemed, lonely wife.  On film, this just doesn't work.

This is so bad, it can't even qualify as "so bad it's good."  Sometimes bad is just bad.  The writing on this is amateurish at best and the acting has no chance.  This all looks like it was filmed in 1 or 2 takes.  This is supposed to be similar to Fatal Attraction, or Enough, but this is light years away from those.  Being honest there is not one element of this that is good. This is a great example of a mid-January thriller movie. This is the frozen bastion of movie releases, and they stick junk like this out there when people have nothing else to to.

But, interestingly enough, this will more than likely be very profitable. With it's microscopic budget and Jennifer Lopez in her underwear,  and a young hunk shirtless for much of this, it won't take long to get all of its cash back. And long before it even goes to streaming, DVD and eventually cable.  But please take some advice from a friend, don't pay for this. Don't stream this in 90 days.  If you must, wait a couple years and some night you'll see this edited on TNT, right after Law And Order.

The Boy Next Door.  There's bad, then there's this.  Could be the final nail in J-Lo's movie starring career.