The Boy Next Door - D

Jennifer Lopez

Rated R, 91 minutes
Wes's Grade: D

No surprise, but JLo "The Boy Next Door" a silly, unoriginal mess of a thriller

Singer and "American Idol" judge Jennifer Lopez occasionally makes a movie in an attempt to show her versatility as a performer, but it generally comes across very badly ("Gigli," "Enough" and "The Back-Up Plan" all come to mind, among others) for her. This time in the it's in the dumb, terribly acted "Fatal Attraction" ripoff which should do nothing but attract the attention of Razzie Award voters. Going through a divorce, high school teacher Claire (Jennifer Lopez) has a one-night stand with a young neighbor (Ryan Guzman), who quickly develops a dangerous obsession with her. Directed by Rob Cohen (of the first "The Fast and the Furious" movie) and written by Barbara Curry, there isn't much good about the awful, third-rate thriller "The Boy Next Door" which should've been sent straight to Lifetime movie purgatory, where it'll end up anyway. It should come as no big surprise how bad it is, but the real surprise is that a lovely, A-list performer like Lopez can't find anything at all available except this low-budget dreck, which features some of the worst dialogue seen this side of Adam Sandler ("stay away from him he's a bad influence" she tells her son - gee ya think so?). I also didn't buy for a second that Lopez was a high school lit teacher, only focusing on the classics (of course) any more than I bought Chris Hemsworth as a nerdy hacker in the recent flop "Blackhat" or the fact that the buff Guzman (seen in a couple of the "Step Up" movies) would bother going to the lengths he does for no real motivation to do so, which after all being said and done, is not fully or clearly explained. Casting-wise, I'm most disappointed that "The Boy Next Door" wastes a terrific, funny actress in the Tony-award winning Kristin Chenowith, who literally gets the ax here, among many of the predictable, laughable moments, including that just plain silly climax. Of all the bad lines in the film, her husband (played by John Corbett, who must've really needed the money) asks her, "haven't we all made mistakes before?" Why, yes, yes you have JLo, and count the badly-acted, written, directed and edited "The Boy Next Door" as another one of your cinematic blunders.