Opening a movie about smut over Easter weekend might be ill advised, but the makers of The Girl Next Door found a way to outsmart everybody: promote a movie as a romantic comedy to cater to women and promote the movie using the word \porn star"" to cater to men.
To believe the trailers, ""The Girl Next Door"" places young Matthew next door to reforming porn queen Danielle, and asks us to see what happens when Matthew finds out he's the last person in America to see his girlfriend naked. This would be a movie a lot of people would want to see, a movie where the protagonist slowly learns that her wild heart is the best thing for him. But movie this isn't the ""The Girl Next Door"".
""The Girl Next Door"" is really the story of being a clumsy teenager, actually being unpopular in highschool and always being out of place. Matthew stumbles through the movie, failing to emulate the slick men he meets and never gaining the confidence and popularity his character's prototype always does. What does Matthew do when he finds out Danielle's old job? He finally believes he'd be able to seduce her, and tries so ineptly it kills the relationship.
And Emile Hersh, who plays Matthew, is perfectly cast. He shirks through his lines and slumps his shoulders, and reaches ""Almost Famous"" levels of out-of-his-element dork chic. Hersh turns a movie that seems like a male-fantasy vehicle into an adorable, cuddly film.
The movie never asks the audience to condemn Danielle for her career or worship her for it and lets her be a woman separate from the job. Much of the time it doesn't focus on her at all, leaving Hersh free to interact with porn producers and cool kids, and be as unsuccessful at each. Elisha Cuthbert's Danielle is a vacant character; her actions largely occur off-screen. There she made porn, there she falls for Hersh, and there she lives out all the actions that would tell her story throughout the film. The romance itself, then, is absent from the movie, although Hersh's love always drives it. ""The Girl Next Door"" seems to have been poised to let Hersh steal the film.
Hersh gives the film enough momentum to survive even without explaining why Cuthbert instantaneously falls in love with him and to survive an overacting Timothy Olyphant as an aimlessly written porn producer. It isn't a great movie, where jokes (even attempts at them) are few and far between, but ""The Girl Next Door"" is a moderate success-a second-tier Cameron Crowe film.
There will be better romantic comedies made this year, but ""The Girl Next Door"" will be among the most endearing. Few movies capture the awkwardness of being a geeky high-school boy as well as ""The Girl Next Door,"" and fewer still capture the awkwardness of being a geeky boy dating a porn star.
