JENNIFER LOPEZ IN THE BOY NEXT DOOR

year: 2015 rating: *1/2

Opens with two characters chatting like it's halfway through, and you better pay attention… Jennifer Lopez is married or, separated from a polite, cheating husband and her son is going on a weekend trip with dad… And what's really important is J-Lo’s Claire Peterson will be alone for a few days…

Well that’s all it takes for a perfect looking twenty-year-old named Noah to become more smitten with his neighbor than Glenn Close was with Michael Douglas, or anyone else in the Tryst-to-Stalker Genre…

Playing out like a Straight to Video throwaway, THE BOY NEXT DOOR has every cliché in the book – or in this case, leaflet. Yet it’s a terrific film to laugh at, exhibiting howling camp value as Noah’s transformation from friendly alpha male bonding with Claire’s passive son, flirtatious model undressing near an open window, steamy bedroom partner into a vicious psychopath happens before Lopez has time to blink, or the audience can finish half their popcorn.

And while his attraction is believable since she looks good enough to lust after, the blinding fascination... from email hacking to picture pasting to brake tampering to kidnapping... is completely farfetched, deleting any suspenseful development that could have made BOY a better, more realistic film – but where’s the fun in that? And yes, it is that bad... Thank Goodness! OVERALL RANK: Jedi, Rebel, Droid, Sith.