The Girl Next Door 4 Stars (Out of 4) Reviewed by Mac VerStandig critic@moviereviews.org http://www.moviereviews.org January 9, 2000 USA Release Date - Not Yet Set
A copy of this review can be found at http://www.moviereviews.org/the_girl_next_door.htm Always insightful, oftentimes humorous and sexy but never boring, The Girl Next Door is a wonderfully enjoyable documentary that will forever change the way you look at the pornography business and its stars. Following Stacey Valentine over her two year venture from an ordinary Oklahoman house wife to one of the biggest names in the world of adult cinema, the movie is an attention grabber that might just be one of the too few documentaries that make it big every year.
Adopted as an infant, raised in Oklahoma and abused as a child; Stacey Baker finds herself in a bad marriage at a young age and escapes to a new family in Los Angeles' world of pornography. Once in sex films, Stacey adapts a screen name of "Stacey Valentine" and finds her life split between the two Staceys. Ms. Baker seeks affection and security while Ms. Valentine ruthlessly goes through man after man on the silver screen. Stacey explains "sex is something just really hot and nasty and dirty and love is another thing." But her two worlds of oil and water clash violently when she starts dating Julian, another porn star.
The Girl Next Door reveals a lot about the adult movie industry. Viewers will come away from the documentary knowing trade lingo like "DP" which stands for "double penetration" and "Stunt Dick," both a noun and an adjective for the man on set who takes over if a star's penis doesn't work. (As an adjective, the man can "stunt dick" for the star and as a noun he is referred to as a "stunt dick.") Several trips to film sets reveal the nonchalant attitude of actors, who often have casual dialogue with the director and each other during there supposedly steamy scenes. By learning all of this through Stacey, someone that we get to know as a real human being, the industry no longer seems to be a gathering of perverts and big bucks, but rather an honest line of work.
On the other hand, the film hardly glamorizes pornography. Stacey warns "there are very few people that I would advise to get in the business. . . only if they love sex." We see her go through downs as well as ups, including the aforementioned bumps with Julian and, perhaps her lowest point, when she prostitutes herself to a fan. There is also somewhat disgusting footage of two plastic surgeries.
The movie is such a ravishing success because it shows all the aspects of Stacey and her work, both strong and vulnerable. Those not deterred beforehand by strong anti-pornography sentiments will enjoy this movie immensely. Although the year is still young, The Girl Next Door should be a major candidate for the best documentary of 2000.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews