The Girl Next Door plays like an advertisement for pre-marital sex and teenage rebellion. What’s worse is that it pretends it doesn’t. What’s even worse it that it pretends as if it's actually moral.

Matthew (Emile Hirsch) is a high school senior who hasn’t done anything crazy until a former porn star named Danielle (Elisha Cuthbert) moves in next door. She begins paying attention to him and Matthew starts doing crazy things.

The pretending to be decent part comes in where Matthew convinces Danielle not to go back into the porn business because she’s “better than that” or something. This very idea, however, is significantly undermined with a rather positive portrayal of the porn industry and straight out promotion of pre-marital sex as long as you “play it safe”.

The pretending to be moral part comes in one subplot where Matthew is preparing for a speech about moral fiber for a scholarship. By the time he makes his final speech, he decides that moral fiber has nothing to do with being a good person and everything to do with going after the pretty girl next door. Upon hearing this I merely assumed that this was one lesson that Matthew had yet to learn and that this was all part of the buildingsroman. It’s not. It is, in fact, totally serious. Matthew’s claims are vindicated and celebrations abound. I don’t think I’ve seen something so blatantly terrible in all my life.

Not that the film doesn’t have a certain aesthetic pleasure. Many of its moments are rather funny and any film that starts with Bowie and ends with The Who is nearly irresistible on my scale. Nearly. The Girl Next Door is much more mature than other films of its genre, but it fails to rise above their fundamental wrong-headedness.

Simply put, The Girl Next Door is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever seen. At no point in its rambling, incoherent message was it even close to anything that could be considered a moral idea. Everyone in the theater is now morally dumber for having seen it. I award this movie no points, and may God have mercy on its soul.

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