UnowPriceless
hyped garbage
Gutsycurene
Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.
Jemima
It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.
Allissa
.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.
callanvass
I'm still scratching my head as to what the point of this movie was? I got what it was trying to sell. Life is very frustrating, and people can be downright callous around you, but that doesn't mean it wasn't pointless in the long run. After the chilling opening with a narrator giving us some info on past serial killers with a creepy musical score, I was ready to dig in and go along with the ride, but what followed was a depressing disappointment. What was the background of Roy & Bo? We get very little insight as to what has made these guys snap, other than a difficult few years in High School, and parents who have neglected them. Most of the movie forces you to follow Roy & Bo around Los Angeles with a pointless killing spree. Despite top billing, Charlie Sheen is not the main star. He shares top billing with Maxwell Caulfield. The main problem I had was with Roy (Maxwell Caulfield) He is a whiny, unsympathetic person who I was begging to see get his. The movie tried to portray him as a sociopath with a screw the world type attitude, but instead they made him into an annoying loser. I think the world sucks some days, but am I suddenly gonna turn into a killer? Get real. Charlie Sheen is a little more bearable. He's a miserable soul himself, but not quite as bad as Roy is. We also get slightly obsolete terms such as "Fag" the gay subtext can't be denied, and stuff you would never see in movies today. An old lady gets drilled in the head and cut open with a beer bottle. It tries way too hard to be offensive, and in the end I just didn't care. We also get some idiotic symbolism at the end that ties in with the beginning of the film, but I was just glad it was over. Final Thoughts: It's one of Charlie Sheen's first movies. It's far from his worst, but still. It's not a very good movie. It tries to be something memorable, and instead becomes forgettable. Teenage agnst is tough, but I don't see why anyone would wanna spend time with these guys. Not really recommended4/10
PeterMitchell-506-564364
Alienation is a terrible thing, it's consequences can sometimes be deadly, as this movie shows. Good looking teens, Caulfield and Sheen, each other's best friend, are shunned by their school peers, (Caulfield, not only his peers) for what reason, I don't know. Desperate for attention, as shown in one of the prior scenes, they're even excluded from a graduation party, they crash anyway. Yeeeeaah, power to them. Snobs. If you were one on the alienated, you'll identify perfectly with this movie, all too well. The repulsed and hostile looks they endure plus all the other crap they take. So they must vent, where they finally graduate to murder, as they take a trip to L.A, and start to kill people at random. That's after dognapping, and beating an Iranian gas station attendant half to death, who was trying to rip them off. You get as good as you give. Oh, and lobbing a beer bottle in the air, hitting an old woman in the head, that's succeeded by two bikini clad women chasing after them, one of who'm is thrown off of Caulfield's car, her friend yelling after them, "Queers". Charlie Sheen, I don't think so. On it's first view you will find certain parts of this movie disturbing, but this is an engrossing one too. One teen drama with flavor, it's final scene of Sheen in slo-mo, haunting. Bits of it might cut too deep, if you're one of the ignored, as it is pretty much a reality movie. And remember this is from the director of the Wayne's World movies. What a change of pace. It starts off great, with photos of infamous serial killers, their real voices attached. This is a movie I urge teens to watch, if any movie. Sheen does well, handsome devil he is, playing to his father's Badlands, exuding just that really small amount of creepiness that he balances well. A real humanistic and quite scary performance, one that hooked me. But it's Caulfield who's the more dangerous of the two, a character who's past the point of no return, inundated with rage, hate, and bitterness, a chilling scene of him in close up at that party, parked down on the ground, chewing his nail, contemplating, watching a sole girl off, watching him. She averts his eyes, repulsed, and a little scared. That's just before he jumps in the pool and turns it pink. Movie's also known as No Apparent Motive. I thoroughly recommend this.
rixrex
The fawning over this lesser Spheeris effort is incredible. The only reason for it is that this melodrama hits the spot for knee-jerk self-proclaimed progressive minds, this being that terrible angst is created in aimless young men by a mindless uncaring society, fomenting into no particularly understood (by them) rage against anyone stepping in the way. What a moronic, simplistic view. Everything here is boiled down to pop psychology and endless unrealistic stereotypes. Even to the point of stereotyping those with whom we are supposed to feel empathy. Along with this is the hinted latent homosexuality from where it appears much of one of the boy's anger stems, yet it's never confronted nor really developed as it should be. We are supposed to just guess then accept that homosexual tendencies are repressed and then erupt into violence, a LOAD OF BUNK and on par with the stupidity of the gay-baiting cop the film supposedly refutes. From the very beginning, where the supposed "normalcy" of various serial killers is trumpeted (point of fact: the killer Kemper was nowhere near normal), to give credence to the jingoistic "boys next door" title, onward to the undeniable effort to show these "boys next door" as nothing like normal in the eyes of their peers, this is nothing more than an immature 90 minute student film. The simplistic and ignorant moments are so many that it's way too difficult to list them all, but if this isn't the worst thing Spheeris has done, then I have yet to see her worst. Better to watch Charlie Sheen and a buffed-up Chris MacDonald in TERMINAL VELOCITY instead of this pile of crap.
EJBaggaley
The boys next door is about two angry psychotic teenagers called Roy Alston(Maxwell Caulfield) and Bo Richards (Charlie Sheen) that go on a killing spree in Los Angeles one weekend and killing anybody that comes their way. I admit this film in many ways is quite twisted, but I can't help liking it for its action scenes, good acting, great soundtrack, humours moments and witty one-liners made this film what it is. I found it somewhat odd that Roy Alston(Maxwell Caulfield) and Bo Richards (Charlie Sheen) were so despised by their school mates because to me they seemed like pretty cool guys, a lot cooler than that nerdy Joe Gonzales who everybody loved who had a party at his house. Does that make sense - I don't think so.There was a period when the film became quite stagnant; In between the scenes after Bo and Roy left Homosexual Chris' apartment after murdering him and when Bo and Roy met Angie outside the pub this film went completely downhill, but other than that this film was great. The scenes when Roy was urinating in Joes swimming pool, when Bo and Roy accidentally walked into the gay bar and when Bo and Roy tricked their school mates into thinking someone was killed at the high school by outlining Bo's body on the road with chalk, I found absolutely hilarious. Once more the funny one-liners when Bo and Roy looked at the woman in the billboard poster and Roy said to Bo 'Look at that bitch - I bet she doesn't even exist'. Another good one-liner I liked was when the girl at the beach called Bo and Roy queers and Roy said to her in response 'Queer - we'll see who the queer is bitch', which he said just before he knocked her friend off the bonnet of his car by screeching to a halt. Anyway, if you haven't seen this film - go see it! for if you like Maxwell Caulfield and Charlie Sheen, you'll definitely like this film.