ORIGINALLY POSTED ON STRAIGHT.COM, JAN. 24, 2015
By Steve Newton
The Boys Next Door is an awesome movie. Maxwell Caulfield and Charlie Sheen were perfect as angst-ridden teens on a murderous rampage in Penelope Spheeris’s jarring study of the underside of the American…
…what’s that? This is supposed to be a review of The Boy Next Door? Singular? You mean that cheesy new potboiler about a beautiful MILF who has sex with a hunky teen, who then goes all Fatal Attraction on her ass?
Alrightie then.
The silliness starts when recently separated high-school English teacher Claire Peterson (Jennifer Lopez) has trouble getting her garage door up and 19-year-old Noah (the one-note Ryan Guzman)—who’s moved next door to care for his ailing uncle–steps in and gets it up for her. Next thing you know he’s off to the hardware store with Claire’s impressionable son in tow to find a garage door-opener part and observe the skateboarding bully (the miscast Adam Hicks of TV’s Zeke and Luther) he’ll soon beat the crap out of.
After Noah’s kindness and bonding with her kid wins over Claire’s heart, the display of his sculpted bod while fixing a car gets her motor running as well. When he calls her up because he can’t cook a chicken and she pops over to help, a few drinks lead to a close inspection of that lusty make-out scene they teased you with in the trailer.
Waking up to instant regret, Claire refuses breakfast in bed and gets the hell out, but psycho Noah’s having none of it. He enrolls in her classical studies course so he can stalk her while comparing Homer to “Zeppelin” and leave photocopies of their tryst lying around everywhere.
Much creeping about in kitchens and basements and the requisite jump-scares lead to one of the corniest climactic showdowns in film history, although it does introduce the Epi-Pen as a new weapon of last resort.
Sorry J.Lo, but since you also had the gall to produce this shameless turkey, your nickname now is J.New-Low.