I was a little reluctant to rent this film. Did I really want to see a story about a boy who falls in love with a girl, then finds out she's been a porn star? The first few minutes of the film show what high school seniors are supposed to be like towards the end of the year - "going nuts," it's called. A certain generation gap seemed to yawn very wide at that point.
We kept watching, though. Give the kids a chance. The story did get better. It's pretty shaky, but I guess it's about as believable as many movie plots - in other words, not very. The theme seems to be "moral fibre." Maybe it's more moral to do some bad things, if for a good cause, than to be a goody-goody? Is it even ethical to be "too good" if one is a graduating senior in the United States at this time in our history? When "going nuts" and "doing something crazy" might be actual moral requirements?
Well, this proved to be a definite distraction from any personal problems of my own. I had given no thought at all to whether or not I had a moral requirement to "go nuts" just before graduating from high school. This was a brand new dilemma.
Of course, the general question of "do the ends justify the means" is not new, and does apply to us all no matter when we graduated high school. Since the range of possible "unethical means" is very wide, there's plenty of scope for varied storytelling on this theme. "The Girl Next Door" isn't one of the worst.
It does rather trick the audience toward the end. This is risky business in storytelling. The audience may resent it. I did, a little bit.
Well, as I'm writing, my rating has somehow sunk from 3 stars to 2. I keep thinking "not too bad" and "ok." So - if you're kind of scraping the bottom of the movie rental barrel, this is not a bad choice. I'll give it 2 stars.
10:38:19 PM 
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