In a turn of events you couldn’t make up no matter how hard you tried, 2004’s cult favorite comedic romp The Girl Next Door boasts a Rotten Tomatoes audience approval rating of 69 percent, the sort of thing you’d scarcely believe it wasn’t entirely fitting for the movie’s entire plot.
Emile Hirsch heads up the cast as an introverted teenager with little interest in partying, at least until he falls head over heels for Elisha Cuthbert’s title character, forcing him out of his shell at long last. However, upon discovering that she makes her living as a porn star, he begins to wonder if he’s really got what it takes to win the girl of his dreams.
As you can imagine, things play out in exactly the way you expect them to, with plenty of scantily-clad antics to be found along the way. However, the most surprising thing about The Girl Next Door is that it possesses plenty of genuine heart, warmth, and emotion, something that can’t be said of a lot of its predecessors during the early-2000s “Frat Pack” boom. That being said, it did bomb at the box office after just about clawing past the $30 million mark in ticket sales.
Almost 20 years on from its release, and the film has reinforced its enduring staying power by making moves on the Netflix charts, with FlixPatrol naming it as a Top 10 hit in countless countries around the world. Of course, even the most frivolous of erotic tales are nigh-on guaranteed to capture attention on the streaming service, The Girl Next Door does at least have a semblance of substance to go along with its copious amounts of exposed flesh.