Cougar Copulates With Crazy in the Ludicrous ‘The Boy Next Door’

Have you ever been unlucky enough to see one of those horrendous Cougar Life ads on TV? You know the one: a buxom, “mature” woman in a red dress walks through a bar scene, stuffing some kind of meat sandwich into a vegetarian’s juvenile pie-hole, admonishing another smug gal for “folding sweaters for a living”, and offering to buy some dissatisfied bo-hunk a drink, all the while making it sound like older ladies lurching after near-underage man meat is a social norm. This is all so naughty and risqué, like fan fiction flotsam a la Fifty Shades of Grey.

Now, flip this scenario. Consider a case wherein the bearded man considered the world’s “Most Interesting” from those Dos Equis commercials cruises a similar setting, knocking various dudes and bros out of the way so that he can scoop on the barely legal babes with his aggressive, “I’m here to get laid” attitude. You’d balk, right? No matter the set-up or circumstances, a way-past-middle-aged masher making cow eyes at the cuties will (and should) stir your social scoldings into a froth. But if American Idol place holder Jennifer “J-Lo” Lopez goes ga-ga for a 19 year old stud muffin next door, we’re supposed to say it’s okay because, (1) he’s of age, if only just, and (2), the good/goose/gander quotient only falls along specific gender divides.

It takes cajones to call up the “erotic thriller” from its direct to video, Red Shoe Diaries deathbed and try to make it viable, even more so when the subtext is “teacher has sex with (could still be a) student”. Here, Jenny from the Block is a soon-to-be-single mom named Claire Peterson. She is separated from her cheatin’ and lyin’ hubby (John Corbett) and is stuck raising their surly son Kevin (Ian Nelson). She’s also an educator. One day, the Hot Topic temptation of the moment, Noah Sandborn (Ryan Guzman), moves into the neighborhood. He’s a troubled still-teen, hints of familial tragedy and the need to take care of a sick relative casting a pall over this place in the narrative.

Of course, the minute Claire sets her peepers on his person, it’s time to get all hot and bothered. Even better, the feeling is more than mutual, and after numerous shots of abs and glutes, our duo does the nasty. Once the frilly copulation montage is over, things take a turn for the terrifying. Noah goes from sexy to psycho and soon he is stalking his conquest while she’s having second thoughts. It’s not long before blood is spilled, our spurned boy toy using Kevin against his mom and racking up quite the body count. Naturally, it all boils down to a crazy, chaotic last act cat and mouse.

The Boy Next Door walks a talent-questionable tightrope between out and out atrocity and gregarious guilty pleasure that it’s hard to hate… fully. Instead, our loathing is occasionally buffered by ditzy dialogue, gratuitous anatomy lessons, zero carnal chemistry between our leads, and at least one line (“I love your mother’s cookies”) that has already become an Internet meme. It’s not Showgirls fun or The Room remarkable; instead, it’s a steaming hunk of odiferous cheese that will end up inspiring a drinking game, a few farcical think pieces, and at least one more season of Lopez sitting in for Paula Abdul. If you’re in the right mood, you’ll be laughing all the way through; sadly, such snickers are not what the filmmakers had in mind.

Or, then again, maybe it is. The Boy Next Door seems solidly self-aware, even when it’s preening like a peacock with neon feathers. In 2015, such material is met with one eye on the arousal factor and the next of a Kickstarter campaign. The minute director Rob Cohen (xXx, The Fast and the Furious) read that a teacher was bedding a (could be) student, he must have thought “controversy,” then “dollar signs,” and then “where do I sign?” Even with ex-criminal lawyer turned screenwriter Barbara Curry on hand to deal with the blowback, such seduction in these constantly in the headlines news cycle must have tasted like the best forbidden fruit. In actuality, it’s loopy and quite stupid, like promising eros and, instead, delivering an earache.

For their part, Ms. Lopez and her young costar (he’s 30 in real life) get a lot of mileage out of pouty pondering and inadvertent lust. Unfortunately, that’s about all they manage. There’s no heat in their passion, no connection to the audience and its own fantasies. Instead, the sex element is the red herring. Frankly, from the way he acts, Claire could have made Noah a tuna fish sandwich and he’s probably be slaughtering the innocent in order to get another “bite”. There are no subtleties here, nor any character complexity. Our heroine is horny, her conquest is crazy, and that’s it. If Cohen was more than a mere journeyman, he might be able to breathe some life into this ludicrousness. In the end, his staid approach only amplifies the outrage.

With Fifty Shades of Grey set to open in a few weeks, we are apparently going through a randy renaissance of sorts. Hollywood no longer is hiding its more prurient desires and, instead, is giving the former raincoat crowd their S&M&B&D&You-Name-It money’s worth. Of course, the gender politics have to be right and the approach appropriate for the potential blue hairs in the crowd. In contrast to that, The Boy Next Door is classic camp cramp, and it’s also a cheat. Reconfigure the sexes and instead of a piffle, you’ve got a problem — a big problem.