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The Girl Next Door stars Emile Hirsch as Matthew Kidman, your everyday high school senior who is days away from graduation. He has led a fairly quiet and seemingly boring life until one day when he sees a beautiful half-naked girl in the window of the house next to his. The "girl next door" is the stunning Danielle (Elisha Cuthbert). Matty and Danielle start hanging out and she shows the somewhat reserved teenager how to really live life. But, their world is soon turned upside down when Danielle's deep, dark secret is revealed. It seems Danielle once had a little foray in the adult film industry and now Matty and his two friends Eli (Chris Marquette) and Klitz (Paul Dano) are plunged into the deep, dark world of whips, chains, naked women and big muscle men in tight leather. Plus Matty must now deal with Danielle's former porn recruiter, Kelly (Timothy Olyphant), who is a violent thief with a bad temper. Needless to say, Matty's life is turned upside down and around during his quest to find true love with a former porn star.
On the now released DVD for "The Girl Next Door", there is a comfortable handful of extras to enjoy. Side one of the DVD features the movie, a full-length commentary by director Luke Greenfield and "Feature Trivia Track: Revealing The Girl Next Door".
The commentary by Luke Greenfield is actually quite a decent commentary. Greenfield talks about all aspects of the movie, the script, the actors, the music, a lot of the usual stuff. But Greenfield is, not surprisingly, quite knowledgeable in all aspects of the movie and his commentary at no time gets boring or stale. He whines a bit about some of the scenes he was forced to cut from the movie by the studio. And he talks a lot about music and is a huge U2 fan which is a big bonus for me. Two thumbs up on this one. It was one of the better commentaries I have heard that features only the director speaking.
The "Feature Trivia Track: Revealing The Girl Next Door" is one of those sort of "pop-up video" features where a bunch of useless and fairly uninteresting facts pop up on the screen throughout the movie. I found this feature a bit hard to read and overall, pretty useless.
Side two of the DVD is where you can find the rest of the special features. Firstly, we have "Scene Specific Commentaries by Emile Hirsch and Elisha Cuthbert". Here we can listen to Hirsch commentate on four scenes and Cuthbert give her comments on five scenes. Nothing out of the ordinary here but Cuthbert might come off as a bit of a "diva" to some as she complains about some of the scenes, her lines and the wardrobe. But she is hot so that is okay.
Secondly, we have a feature called "The Eli Experience" where actor Chris Marquette (who plays Eli) goes to an actual adult entertainment convention with a movie crew and tries to trick people into filming a gay porn scene with the musclehead who played "Mule" in the movie. Mule also walks around asking men if he can kiss them. It is actually quite humourous to watch and these guys really seem to push some of the people they are playing with to the limit. A rather humourous bit.
Next up is a bit entitled "A Look Next Door". This feature gives us some behind-the-scenes footage, comments from some of the actors, the director, producers and some other people involved in the movie. A short but sweet feature with some good footage to boot.
The "Gag Reel" is exactly what it claims to be. Some great footage of boobs in this bit. It's okay but "The Eli Experience" was funnier.
Deleted and Extended Scenes has 16 deleted or extended scenes. A couple of them are good. There is also an option for a director commentary. It seems most of the scenes were taken out of the film for time reasons but a few of the scenes were forced out by the studio.
There is also a "Still Gallery" that includes a number of pictures from the movie and "Trailers" which includes the trailer for this movie, a "DVD Promo Reel", "Club Dread's DVD Trailer" and "There's Something More About Mary DVD Trailer".
Overall, "The Girl Next Door" is a fairly decent film to watch with what I consider to be the perfect amount of extras for a movie of this style. I wouldn't say this is the greatest teen comedy of all-time, but it has its fair share of laughs, as well as some likeable (and one unlikeable) characters, plenty of T&A, a decent soundtrack and Elisha Cuthbert. The extras are decent and not overdone. "The Girl Next Door" is worth checking out for anyone who needs a good laugh, wants to see plenty of skin and feels like reminiscing about their high school days gone by.
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