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Film, TV and Streaming

Review: The Boy Next Door

Ryan Guzman, left, as Noah and Jennifer Lopez as Claire Peterson star in “The Boy Next Door.”

If you’ve seen the deliciously bad trailer for “The Boy Next Door,” you already know some of the film’s best – which is to say its worst – lines. “I love your mom’s cookies” may go down in history as the most hilariously inappropriate double-entendre ever spoken by one high school student to another after the first one has slept with his schoolmate’s mother.

That is the premise of this future camp classic, in which Jennifer Lopez’s schoolteacher character has ill-advised rebound sex with a studly student (Ryan Guzman) after catching her husband (John Corbett) cheating on her. It should be noted that, at 45, Lopez’s “cookies” are still in fine form. Director Rob (“The Fast and the Furious”) Cohen lavishes almost as much attention on them as he does on Guzman’s buns, which are presented as two of the film’s other small pleasures.

That this lucky student, Noah, is said to be almost 20 makes it only slightly less icky than it sounds, even though it’s never adequately explained why the kid is still taking AP classes when most others his age would be halfway through college. Guzman, who’s actually pushing 30 – and whose character quotes Homer’s “Iliad” and wears neckties to class – looks more like the undercover cops from “21 Jump Street” than a boy. It’s just one of the film’s many improbabilities, which will either flow over you like water, if you let them, or irritate like an itchy wool sweater, if you fight them.

Quickly, Noah is revealed to be a psychotic stalker who won’t take no for an answer when Lopez’s Claire comes to her senses and tries to break off their relationship. “I will never, ever,” he tells Claire, pausing for dramatic effect, “going to let you go.” (This laughably ungrammatical statement may explain why he has been held back at school.) Before long, Noah has transformed from Jason Schwartzman’s precocious preppy in “Rushmore” into Glenn Close from “Fatal Attraction.”

Like a car careening down the Hollywood hills without brakes – yes, that’s a scene in the film – “The Boy Next Door” rushes pell-mell from psychological thriller territory into the realm of horror film. At times, Noah is like a distant cousin of Norman Bates, with better abs.

Though its studio, Blumhouse Productions, is best known for the “Paranormal Activity” series and other frightfests, “The Boy Next Door” plays best as unintentional comedy. It’s a movie about a young man with an unhealthy mother fixation, but if you go into it expecting something closer to “Mommie Dearest” than “Psycho,” you’ll probably have a much better time. Rated R. One and one-half stars.



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