Girl Next Door

Doctor Arthur Bradley (Henry Czerny) is married to is high school sweetheart, is about to become a father, and is one of the most prominent citizens in his small town. When his neighbor the mayor and his wife go out of town, they ask the good doctor to keep an eye on their daughter in her late teens. The daughter has the hots for older men, and seduces the doctor. When she turns up dead, the doctor is afraid they will discover he had sex with her, and equally afraid they will accuse him of the murder.

NUDITY REPORT

Polly Shannon has two very dark nude scenes. The first is skinny-dipping in her pool at night with the lights out and steam rising from the pool, but you can make out breasts, buns, and maybe bush. The second is while having sex with the doctor, and is just a breast.

In my opinion, they made three main mistakes with this film.

First, they kill off the only young, attractive and likeable character in the first third.

Second, they develop several characters, then drop them from the rest of the film, such as her alcoholic, pill popping, bored and stuck in a bad marriage mother.

Third was their choice of male lead, who spends most of the film looking like a puppy who has just shit on the new carpet, and sees you coming with a rolled up newspaper.

DVD info from Amazon.

barebones

The Critics Vote

no major reviews
Rotten Tomatoes summary. There are six reviews on file. The three graded ones are all positive

The People Vote ...

With their votes ... IMDB summary: IMDb voters score it 4.8

IMDb guideline: 7.5 usually indicates a level of excellence, about like three and a half stars from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm watchability, about like two and a half stars from the critics. The fives are generally not worthwhile unless they are really your kind of material, about like two stars from the critics. Films under five are generally awful even if you like that kind of film, equivalent to about one and a half stars from the critics or less, depending on just how far below five the rating is.

My own guideline: A means the movie is so good it will appeal to you even if you hate the genre. B means the movie is not good enough to win you over if you hate the genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an open mind about this type of film. C means it will only appeal to genre addicts, and has no crossover appeal. D means you'll hate it even if you like the genre. E means that you'll hate it even if you love the genre. F means that the film is not only unappealing across-the-board, but technically inept as well.

Based on this description, I say C-. The photography was wonderful, as was the location, but the film was slow, and not very interesting. By the time we found out whodunnit, I just didn't care.