Unintended laughs far, far outnumber intended thrills as Jennifer Lopez — playing the hottest and dumbest high school teacher in America — has a one-night stand with a hunky student, and then wishes she hadn’t all the way till the end credits roll in the ludicrously plotted “The Boy Next Door.’’
All it takes to get into her panties is a set of chiseled abs, a gift of a “first edition’’ of the Iliad from a “garage sale’’ and a few lines of hokey love patter (“A woman like you should be cherished’’).
J.Lo’s English teacher Claire quickly tumbles into bed with her new 19-year-old neighbor Noah (Ryan Guzman, who is not only a terrible actor but easily looks a decade older), while her teenage son is off on a camping trip with her estranged husband (John Corbett).
Claire, of course, spends the rest of the film regretting this night of artfully posed and lit passion, as Noah instantly turns into a full-on psychopath when she rejects his repeated overtures for seconds.
Gales of laughter erupted at my screening when Claire walks into her classroom and discovers that Noah — who has been suspended from school by this point — has somehow gotten in and papered the room with hundreds of printouts of a compromising video frame grab, with more spewing from a fax machine.
That’s far from the most unbelievable twist in the script credited to former prosecutor Barbara Curry. Claire and her best friend, the vice principal (Broadway’s Kristin Chenoweth, in her largest and most thankless screen role to date), plot a ridiculous scheme for Claire to sneak into Noah’s home.
It’s not really giving anything away to report that Claire actually deletes evidence incriminating Noah for the death of his parents. She then calls the vice principal’s cellphone and — before anyone says “hello’’ — breathlessly reports what she’s found. Not hard to guess who is listening on the other end of the line.
Then again, Claire is the sort of woman-in-peril who always neglects to draw the blinds while mincing around her bedroom in lingerie and stilettos — and her makeup and hair is always flawless, even when she’s trussed up in a burning building.
Directed by Rob Cohen as an unabashed trash wallow, “The Boy Next Door’’ wants badly to be a cut-rate “Fatal Attraction,’’ but ends up getting more laughs than many comedies.