Pun Salad

The hero here is named Kale. He's developed attitude problems due to a horrific tragedy in his life, and I'm not talking about being named after a vile vegetable. He winds up being sentenced to house arrest, with an ankle monitor making sure he doesn't leave the premises. His mom cuts off XBox, and other similar timewasters, so Kale becomes a voyeur. (It was either that, or—ewwww!—read some books, I guess.) At first he concentrates on his pretty new neighbor, but then attention shifts to the weird neighbor who cuts his grass just a little too often. Hijinks ensue!

This is supposed to remind you of Hitchcock's Rear Window, but the unfortunate corollary to this is that it will also remind you that Rear Window was a much better movie.

I, for one, would never have expected you could get away with saying "shit" so many times in a PG-13 movie.

Shia LaBeouf, who I liked quite a bit in Transformers, plays Kale, and he's fine here too. But his mom is played by … Carrie-Anne Moss! I don't know about you, but I found that more Disturbia-ing than anything else in the movie. At one point, pretty neighbor observes to Kale: "Your mom is hot!" Duh—way too hot to play a mother!