IN 1993 Tom Cruise's teeth and tan starred in the rites of passage comedy Risky Business about a clean college boy's descent into the murky world of prostitution.

The Girl Next Door (15) is so similar in tone and message it could be a remake of that film. Emile Hirsch stars as a promising High School genius who has sacrificed his social life and any vestages of street cred in exchange for top grades and a place at an Ivy League college.

But secretly he yearns for a girlfriend and the acceptance of the cool set at school.

He gets that by the bucketload when Elisha Cuthbert moves in next door. Cuthbert, who plays Keifer Sutherland's hopeless daughter who keeps getting into life-threatening situations in TV's 24, is a curvy blonde who could obviously have any man she chooses but this being a teen wish fulfilment movie, she goes after Hirsch.

This immediately wins him the respect of his peers, particularly when a pornography-savvy pal recognises Cuthbert.

It emerges that she is one of America's leading porn stars and the fact she is hankering after Hirsch elevates him to such heights of coolness he makes the Fonz look like Bamber Gascoigne.

But hanging out with a porn star brings its own problems and Hirsch soon crosses swords with Cuthbert's seedy and menacing manager Timothy Olyphant, who takes great exception to her jeapoardising her career by hanging out with someone so respectable.

Hirsch has his eyes opened to the unpleasant side of the adult entertainment industry when Olyphant starts to threaten him and he vows to prise Cuthbert away from his clutches.

The problem with all of this is that Cuthbert is painted as some unknowing innocent one minute and then a very knowing purveyor of blue films the next. Like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, the fact she is doing what she is doing should be evidence that she isn't really that nice.

But hey its a film so who cares about reality? Cuthbert is extremely watchable and relishes the role of sex object. Hirsch is charming and amiable in a Tom Hanks rather than a Tom Cruise way.

The film pretends to be a lot sleazier than it really is and screenwriters Stuart Blumberg, David Wagner and Brent Goldberg engineer a fabulous sleight of hand in the final five minutes.

By Gary Lawrence