The Girl next door

It must be every school boys’ dream if you’re into girls. Obsessed with thinking about women, you’re studying as Matthew Kidman (Hirsch) is one day, then you look out of your window and in the window of the nearby house you see a young woman – in this case Danielle (Cuthbert), and she’s stripping off. She’s got a figure to die for and you think she kind of likes the fact that you’re watching. Could it get any better ? In this case yes, and no, since the girl comes round to confront her ‘peeping tom’ but then you find she’s a rising young porn star!

Matthew’s infatuation and growing friendship with his wild but wonderful neighbour is obviously the envy of his peers but to throw a spanner in the works, is Danielle’s pimp Kelly (Olyphant) who proves to be a major stumbling block in their relationship. Get Danielle out of her obligations as a porn star and Matthew would be in easy street, but that’s easier said than done.

Luke Greenfield succeeds in coming up with a teen comedy that sails close to the wind in having a schoolboy’s adulation of a porn star as its core romance, but gets away with it since the characters are perfectly believable, we don’t (you may be relieved to hear) see much of Danielle’s porn career and overall its quite fun in a gawky sort of a way since it pokes fun at things you might not expect and after a while you want the romance of two people from different sides of the tracks to succeed. Reasonable fare all-told even if it is going down the same road as Risky Business.

Matt Arnoldi