by Rebecca Mikulin

Created on: May 25, 2009

It's always hard losing a parent, a fact Kale Brecht (Shia LeBeouf) has been discovering the hard way...culminating in him losing his temper and punching his Spanish teacher in the face. Unfortunately for Kale this isn't his first offense and so he could land in juvy for the next three years, but since his Dad just died recently the judge takes pity on him and instead sentences him to three months of house arrest.

Kale's mother is understandably very upset at her son getting in trouble yet again and costing her a cool $12 per day just to wear a tracker around the house all day and (also understandably) cancels his X-Box Live, internet, and iTunes subscriptions to hopefully teach him a lesson about his behavior.

What does happen is that Kale gets so bored out of his mind that he makes use of the only interesting item he can find in the house...a pair of binoculars. A good-looking girl (Sarah Roemer) just moved in next door and what better pastime than spying on her all day? When she finally comes over to visit they join forces to watch the creepy other neighbor who Kale has decided (from the snippets of news he's watched) is a serial killer from Texas.

The more the teens watch the more convinced they are that they've guessed correctly...but what do they say? The police won't listen to some kid on house arrest that's already caused them some problems and the suave elderly neighbor couldn't possibly be anything but the harmless and helpful person he appears to be.

Alright, so last night I got together with some friends and we were bored and there was absolutely nothing else on the movie channels that we hadn't already seen and this one sounded like it might be decent. Originally based on the Hitchcock film Rear Window from the 1950s (a movie that's been redone a few times since). Sadly, I think the movie was just redone a few too many times.

Even though I never saw any of the previous movies with the same story or the same basis I still found it thoroughly predictable and altogether just barely held my attention. The acting wasn't too bad, not great but not too horrible either, LeBeouf definitely didn't do near the job in this film as he did in Transformers (a performance I was fairly impressed with) but he was convincing enough as a geeky 17-year-old who was bored to death...but just how interesting can a movie be when of it is spent watching a 17-year-old being bored out of his mind? Some movies take that time to build suspense and this one made an effort to do just that...but a wasted effort, as it only succeeded in making me feel the same emotion as the aforementioned main character.

The idea behind the movie was originally a good one (it was Hitchcock, after all) but has since been so overdone and by less and less skilled directors that there's nothing left in it and this film is worth a tiny bit of entertainment but that's about it. Overall I thought this movie made some alright background noise and helped alleviate our boredom a little better than staring at the walls but if you're actively seeking an entertaining film this is definitely not the one I'd recommend.

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