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Battle of the Butt Cheeks

Battle of the Butt Cheeks

Guzman-cr_0

J-Lo’s The Boy Next Door needs camp counseling

Who's teasing who in The Boy Next Door? The film's naughtily publicized sex scene between Jennifer Lopez as high school classics instructor Claire Peterson and Ryan Guzman as her over-age student Noah, are anticipated through close-ups that expose Lopez's breast cleavage and her famous posterior then a meet-cute montage that highlights Guzman's swollen biceps and hairy pits.

Mainstream movie arousal typically uses female objectification but the female/male contrasts here resembles those tale-of-the-tape match-ups at a prizefight. The Boy Next Door tries to have it both ways for commercial reasons--J-Lo is the brand-name star--but Guzman (Jake from TV's Pretty Little Liars) provides the frisson that makes the film's cougar fantasy work.

Guzman squints, a trait that classically focuses masculine intensity; his eye-strain implies both concentration and sensitivity. Then he smiles--an Elvis-like snarl that makes it flirtatious. When Noah/Guzman expresses amusement, pleasure or approval, it's not just a social nicety but a hint at something more intimate--and inevitably dangerous. That suggestion of sexual threat is what the film needs to drive the story of Claire's indiscretion, her yielding to temptation--and Noah's hotness.

SLIDESHOW | RYAN GUZMAN

In an earlier era, when movies regularly focused on womens' dreams and emotions--and implicitly those of their female (and gay male) audiences--filmmakers avoided The Boy Next Door's blatancy. J-Lo doesn't have the good fortune of a great Hollywood star like Joan Crawford who, at the same age J-Lo is now (45), was already into the second phase of her unparalleled career which featured iconic characterizations in Mildred Pierce, Possession, Humoresque and Daisy Kenyon. Poor, Flygirl J-Lo is forced to trade Crawford's emotional magnitude for flagrant sexual behavior.

Because Claire's in-heat demeanor so contradicts the maternal, schoolmarm seriousness that makes her tell off a suitor for preferring money to education ("J.K. Rowling. Billionaire. Classics major."), the film's obvious exploitation aspects dominate the story. It's all about cheap lust.

That also means Guzman battles J-Lo as the film's primary sexual object. When Noah compliments Claire, and she responds in a shot where her eyes go directly to his crotch, the film goes beyond camp. (Joan made hotties Sterling Hayden, Cliff Robertson, and Ty Hardin bow down to her.) In the big sex scene, Guzman's hands grab J-Lo's haunches, lifting them onto his hips. As he slips a finger into her thong, it's J-Lo who grips his firm butt cheeks. No wonder J-Lo wakes up in a daze.

J-lo-guzman

A more confident film would have been titled The Bad Boy Next Door, capitalizing on Noah/Guzman's appeal to both male and female viewers. But it also would need a different director than Rob Cohen, adept of The Fast and the Furious and XXX, yet far from camp masters (and true maestros) George Cukor, Michael Curtiz, Clarence Brown and Otto Preminger who all made Crawford a diva for all seasons. Cohen seems hired for the film's car chases and fight scenes, not for moments of domestic tension and sexual chagrin. Not for moments that show J-Lo as aging sexpot. Even the camp lines -- such as "It got wet here" and "I love your mother's cookies" (said to Claire's petulant, gayish son) -- go flat.

In last year's White Bird in a Blizzard, Gregg Araki added gayness (male eroticism) to campy melodrama, thus expanding the genre. The Boy Next Door has potential to do the same but collapses into tired, out-dated formula. Guzman's resemblance to a tall, hunky James Franco suggests a hag-loving movie (paging Charles Busch of Die Mommie Die). The Boy Next Door should have been a comedy. Two kinds of laughter could be heard at the screening: overloud derision and tacky, titillated enjoyment.

Watch the trailer for The Boy Next Door below:

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