The Boy Next Door (2015)

[Dejana]

Per the IMDb:

 

A newly divorced woman falls for a younger man who has recently moved in across the street from her, but their torrid affair soon takes a dangerous turn.

 

Director: Rob Cohen
Writer: Barbara Curry
Stars: Jennifer Lopez, Ryan Guzman, Kristin Chenoweth

 

There's been a lot of discussion about the title character not exactly looking like a high schooler and how it would be harder to play up the unintentional comedy angle, if he had. In the movie trailer thread, @Betweenyouandme brought up this:

 

I kept thinking about if it were a male teacher and a female student...would the same number of people have been in the theater? Would I have gone even?

 

I think you might have more outrage at the idea of a female student possibly being victimized in some way, even if she had been legal and was played by someone in her late twenties. We're nearly twenty years on from Mary Kay Letourneau and female teachers are prosecuted for having sexual contact with students, even if it's not always treated like an outrage the way it would be with a male teacher, but the trailers/ads of The Boy Next Door seemed almost wholly divorced from anything approaching reality. So, maybe a gender flipped version with...IDK, Rob Lowe or John Stamos, being stalked by "high school student" Amber Heard, with a trailer that had a line as hilarious as "I love your mother's cookies"...

 

Still, I can imagine  a bunch of blog and social media posts protesting about Hollywood making light of a serious crime and that this is the industry that rushes to laud Roman Polanski and Woody Allen, so what can you expect? While in real life, there's not a brigade of masculinists rushing to defend Ryan Guzman's fictional virtue. Perhaps, if it were a female student more of the sympathy would be expected to go her way.

 

As for the movie itself, the reviews make it sound entertainingly bad, with more than a few comparisons to Obsessed.

Edited January 24, 2015 by Dejana

[ribboninthesky1]

Apparently, this movie is exceeding box office expectations.  I know January is the month where films go to die, but people are still going to see it.  Don't think anyone saw that coming. 

[Betweenyouandme]

I really was surprised that the screening I went to in the early afternoon on Friday was almost sold out. And the crowd gasped in sheer excitement when the 50 Shades preview showed. Lol

[Trini]

 

I kept thinking about if it were a male teacher and a female student...would the same number of people have been in the theater? Would I have gone even?

 

The thing is, I'm pretty sure a movie with a teen female obsessed with an older lover has already been made -- multiple times, even.

[harrie]

All I know about this movie is the line from the commercial where the neighboring teen says "I love your mother's cookies."  I'm in, but I'm waiting for video.  

[BooBear]

j-lo has been on tv begging the Latino community to support her film as a sign of the strength of the Latino market.  Think that could be a reason it did well.

[Betweenyouandme]

The thing is, I'm pretty sure a movie with a teen female obsessed with an older lover has already been made -- multiple times, even.

Yes, but how many of those movies did the male actually have steamy onscreen sex with the girl's actual butt cheeks showing?

[Bruinsfan]

Note to self: Buy this train wreck when it shows up in the $5 DVD bin at Wal-Mart.

 

I do have to note that this weekend I saw a movie with even more ridiculous age gaps between actors and their teenage characters than this one: Maleficent. Disney, I can suspend my disbelief for the existence of magic and faeries, but I draw the line at being asked to buy Angelina Jolie and Sharlto Copley as 16-year-olds!

Edited January 26, 2015 by Bruinsfan

[portfino]

I kinda liked Guzman's performance beyond the fact that he looked amazing. He went toe to toe with JLo in the most important scenes, which I'm not sure a lot of actors who could (with a HEAVY suspension of disbelief) pass for teenagers would. I also though Kristen Chenoweth did well in a small role. What was up with the opening scene with JLo flashing back to her divorce?

 

I sorta agree with the gender complaints. There's a scene where JLo says 

who are they going to believe you or me

and it's played totally straight which would IMO never happen if the genders were switched. The beauty of  Fatal Attraction was that Michael Douglas's character didn't deserve it. But he didn't not deserve it either. This movie goes through somersaults to absolve JLo's character of the slightest wrongdoing.

[JessePinkman]

j-lo has been on tv begging the Latino community to support her film as a sign of the strength of the Latino market.  Think that could be a reason it did well.

 

It's so weird because I can't recall the last time she played a character who was demonstrably Latino. Of course all of her characters are Latino by virtue of being played by Jennifer Lopez but at the same time they're...white ladies. Basically. I'm trying hard to find the right words here, people.

 

This movie was...not good. She wasn't good in it. Her character had no drive, she was a victim throughout and I really don't think being so docile is her strength. And I hated the kid playing her son, horrible acting. 

 

A lot of it didn't make sense, I didn't understand why Claire wrote off Ryan Guzman's character so quickly. He's hot, you're hot, you had good sex and he's legal. Just tell him to go to a different high school. Or get your GED, dude. 

 

And at another point Claire breaks into his house while Kristin Chenowith is distracting him after school, why didn't she just go to his house when she knew he'd be in class all day? Why risk him catching her? I'm asking too much of this movie, I know.

[Betweenyouandme]

It seemed like a Lifetime movie that would catch my attention. But, yes....I had a brief dissociative moment when she said, "who are they gonna believe?" That. Stuff. Sucks.