This is the sort of filmmaking that has people either exclaiming they’ve witnessed something confronting, honest and engaging or a boring, clichéd load of crap. I think the problem is that the critics aren’t too sure how to honestly categorise a documentary about a porn stars warts and all travels through the industry, showing just how disillusioned she really is with the job, herself and life in general. Perhaps they just don’t want to admit that this sort of doco is like driving past a car crash. You don’t want to look, but you just can’t resist the temptation to see other people in distress.

This doco follows the career of Stacy Valentine over two years as she tries to earn the porno industry’s equivalent of an Oscar (“ And the Oscar for Best F...� er, I better not go there). Along the way, she also tries to find emotional stability and a stable trusting and loving relationship. Getting her start by winning a nude photo competition in a magazine, the offers for photo shoots and porn movie work flowed in. Thinking she wasn’t good at anything in life and that she had perhaps found her calling, she set off on a search for the perfect self with multiple operations to nip this, tuck that and enlarge the others. The operation scenes are probably the most confronting things to be found on the disc. The scenes of her breast implants being removed for a smaller model are not for the squeamish, are could easily deter those thinking of having the same procedure done to enlarge their own set.

I think The Girl Next Door highlights that the porn biz really does contain people who feel they really are achieving something in life. Stacy wonders why she can’t get any respect and normal love and affection, yet she looks for it from others who are also in the industry. Bad move, because the men around her are so blatantly in it just for the paid sex with pneumatic women that a stable and workable relationship seems out of the question. Those confused enough to consider that the job constitutes an artform in any way shape or form are merely avoiding the sad truth that they do it for the sex and the money, no more and no less. Virtually everyone featured in this documentary comes across mentally void in one aspect or another, as witnessed by many of the inane comments made throughout. The worst thing is, I doubt they’re playing to the camera. For them, the camera in any form seems to have become an integral part of moving through life. There’s nothing to hide and no place to hide it. The Girl Next Door? My neighbours weren’t this deluded last time I looked.

Obviously, not having a huge budget and being shot on video cameras over two years the quality of the fullframe footage varies. It does have some fine segments which are as clear as the format allows, but ranges down to scenes which contain a fair bit of noise and average resolution. The image drops in quality during effects such as slo-mo’s, but the drop in quality appears to be in the source and not resultant from the transfer. Colours are reasonably natural looking, but many night scenes and darker shots look pretty average.

The audio is an average Dolby Digital 2.0 job. While nothing stands out as either exemplary or disagreeable, everything comes across as best as can be expected from a fly on the wall doco. The odd line or two of conversation spoken away from the camera might be hard to pick up on, but that’s the nature of capturing the events as they occur. The main focus of the discussions is generally fine, however.

The extras consist of a trailer for the doco and for Amores Perros, Betty Blue, The Monkey's Mask, Mullet, Paris, Texas, Romance, Sex-The Annabel Chong Story and Tackle Happy. There are also brief profiles of Stacy Valentine and the film makers. The profile for Christine Fugate (producer and director) also has an adio only interview held by and Australian for Inpress magazine. Full marks for including this local content on the dvd. There are also some very brief production notes to finish it off.