Watch out for young men

Ryan Guzman and Jennifer Lopez in a scene from "The Boy Next Door." Photo by Suzanne Hanover, © 2015 Universal Pictures.

Have you ever played the license plate game, the one where you try to find plates from different states, to pass the time during epic car trips? Watching “The Boy Next Door” evokes a similar reaction; there's really nothing you can do but count the differing clichés and try to remember the last time a Jennifer Lopez movie was a sign of excitement.

Directed with a barely a skosh of confidence by “The Fast and the Furious” director Rob Cohen, Lopez slouches through the motions as a high-school classics teacher waffling on a decision to divorce her straying husband (John Corbett). She's been alone for months, taking care of her teenage son (Ian Nelson) and receiving useless relationship advice from sassy best friend cum school vice principal Vicky (Kristin Chenoweth). 

Chenoweth pictured during better days.

All of that changes when hunky young Noah (the ab-tastic Ryan Guzman) moves in next door to fulfill the destiny the title evokes. A little flirting leads to a night of passion, one Lopez regrets instantly. Guzman, however, has different ideas, and begins to stalk the Latina singer and her family with greater and greater menace until the inevitable showdown involving fire, a gun and other violent shenanigans.  

I'm trying to think of something legitimately positive to say about “The Boy Next Door” without devolving into snark, but I just keep coming up empty. It's a catastrophe of a film, a product that lacks regard for plot machinations, logic and any true motivation from the actors to do anything besides recite their lines and hope the paychecks don't bounce.

Not that they deserve the onus of the blame for this film, as the problem rests in part to some rather weak casting. Guzman, though very pretty, doesn't bring the menace his role requires; he's more moderately perturbed than volcanic. Nelson pouts and rages softly against the dying of his night light, while Corbett and Chenoweth can and have done much better than this. Lopez's performance serves as a reminder that Lopez is still paid to act every then and now, and makes viewers long for the days when performances in “Selena” and “Out of Sight” were the norm. 

Lopez pictured during much better days.

The film's real faults lie in the efforts of Cohen and screenwriter Barbara Curry, who combine to forge a thriller that doesn't excite or engage the audience. Cohen, better known for films like the aforementioned original “Furious” flick, “Daylight,” “xXx” and the Bruce Lee biopic from 1993, doesn't possess the patience to craft the atmosphere needed for this genre. He's an action director at heart, and even slips in a hilariously unnecessary car explosion because why not.

He is though a bit hamstrung by Curry’s script, or whatever remained of it after the probable tinkering from producers and an armada of other people. In her first credit as a screenwriter — the IMDB.com bio claims she spent a decade as a U.S. Attorney — Curry clearly has an endearment to bad dialogue and a fascination for beautifully trite clichés. Here's a list of a few of the screenwriting sins she commits in a hint more than 90-minutes: she has a character drop an “I can't put my finger on it” to describe Guzman's behavior; she has an epic romantic moment occur amidst a rainstorm (Nicholas Sparks would be embarrassed by its gaudiness); she calls a school dance the “fall fling”; she has a character drop a weapon the moment after using it; she offers a rather pop-psychology solution for her villain’s motivation; and she has a character decides to go down into a scary basement on her own. Combine all of that with fat plot holes and heaping amounts of idiot plot (in essence, Lopez acting like a dolt to move the plot along) and you end up with a perfect little disaster.

Really, the best moments of “The Boy Next Door” come when the filmmakers behind this cinematic ruin pull off one of those winks to the audience that says “yes, we know this is stupid too.” Guzman slipped in a couple in the form of ridiculous line readings and funny scary faces, and Cohen does his part with a second car accident shot done in three angles, the result being a scene far more befitting the “Furious” franchise than a mediocre thriller.

It's all very, very silly stuff, and it's pretty fun to listen to an audience jeer with a mix of joy and pity at a film that provides much unintentional entertainment through stupidity and perfect levels of ludicrous inanity.

Review: One and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 91 minutes (One hour and 31 minutes)

Genre: Thriller

Ask Away

Target audience: Any remaining Jennifer Lopez fans, maybe?

Take the whole family?: “The Boy Next Door” earns the “R” rating for moderate violence and gratuitous sex scenes that are rather silly.

Theater or Netflix?: Rent if you must … it makes for good “Mystery Science Theater 3000” fodder.

Why is this so taboo? Jennifer Lopez’s main complaint for the affair is that the situation is wrong, but I’m not quite sure why. Sure, Ryan Guzman’s character is much younger, but he’s still an adult in the film (he’s even pushing 20) and he’s not one of her students when the film kicks off.

Watch this instead?: If you want a bad, melodramatic drama, just watch “The Room” and prepare for an onslaught of accidental hilarity. Just try not to say “oh hai” when greeting people for the next two weeks.

  

Oh, hai Mark.