Lopez’s Latest a Very Bad Boy
I’m not going to waste a lot of time on the Jennifer Lopez vehicle The Boy Next Door. In many ways it reminds one of those ‘evil seductive teenager’ movies of the 1990s, films like Poison Ivy, The Crush, The Babysitter and Fear. It features a beloved High School literature teacher, Claire Peterson (Lopez), who for a variety of not altogether surprising (or for that matter interesting) reasons ends up having a brief, one-night affair with the new kid who’s moved in next door, the sexy and charming Noah Sandborn (Ryan Guzman). Low and behold, the teen proves to be something of a minor psychopath, and when the object of his affections attempts to end things to say he goes off the deep end into total madness is a rather obvious understatement.
So, first-things-first, not that it makes Claire’s lack of self-control less egregious, especially considering she already knows she’s going to be potentially teaching the kid when the new semester starts in a handful of weeks, but Noah is 19, almost 20, and it isn’t like she’ll be going to jail if their liaison becomes public. The teacher would lose her job, this goes without saying, but there wouldn’t be any prison, especially after it becomes common knowledge Noah is a sociopath with murderous inclinations, so keep that in mind when events lackadaisically stroll into crazy-land.
With that out of the way, it isn’t like any other facet of the film leads a viewer to believe they’re watching anything even slightly believable. The initial moments showcasing her fracturing marriage to husband Garrett (John Corbett) are instantly derisory, while the relationship between son Kevin (Ian Nelson) and newcomer Noah is so absurd even the CW would be loath to showcase anything close to similar on any of their melodramatically histrionic programs aimed teen, tween and young adult audiences. A supporting turn from Kristin Chenoweth as Claire’s best friend – her school’s vice principal, no less – is so unctuous and ill-conceived I felt mortified for the Tony Award-winner and veteran character actress, and with a filmography made up of egregious disasters like Deck the Halls, RV and You Again I’m starting to think she should stick to Broadway and give up on appearing in features altogether.
For director Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious, Dragonheart) this is arguably a new career low, and considering this the guy who made Alex Cross, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor and The Skulls, I don’t make that sort of declaration lightly. The man who made the HBO film The Rat Pack as well as moderately entertaining throwaways like Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story and Daylight seems to have disappeared never to return. More than that, it’s almost as if he’s completely disinterested in trying to craft anything close to palatable (or, for that matter, entertaining), the whole thing seemingly mad e as if the director was on autopilot all the way from start to finish.
I don’t want to be too disparaging towards screenwriter Barbara Curry. It’s no small thing to get a script greenlit, and there’s always the potential that what ended up on screen wasn’t exactly what the writer intended when she started fleshing things out and creating these characters. Same time, it’s really hard to imagine how any of this was envisioned from the onset, the characters so ill-defined and poorly fleshed out none of them are captivating save for the question as to just how stupid they will all collectively act at any given point. It’s all a giant mess that gets more and more idiotic and mindless as things progress (at one point a character presents a first edition of Homer’s The Iliad to someone as a gift – think about that for a second), so unintentionally hysterical the unhinged lunacy connecting one scene to the next borders on impressive.
What happened to the Jennifer Lopez who appeared in Out of Sight, Selena, The Cell and even Maid in Manhattan I do not know. I will say, much like her appearance in the admittedly lackluster Jason Statham thriller Parker, I can’t say she does anything to embarrass herself. But the movie, one that she in fact produced herself, is embarrassing, continually, all the way through, every step Claire or any other character within takes to reach the finish line. The Boy Next Door is truly as bad as it gets, and only those in need of a hearty, all-encompassing laugh should be even slightly considering giving it a look.
Film Rating: ½ (out of 4)
