Back in 2014, Neighbors became a hit and
marked, if not a maturation of Seth Rogen and his foul-mouthed comedy style, at
least a shift towards more mature thematic concerns, particularly those of
fatherhood and marriage. Produced for a modest sum, and with a worldwide box
office haul of more than $270 million, it’s two years later and the no-brainer
sequel is here to strengthen Rogen’s dad brand.
Is Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising
necessary? No. Is it formulaic? Yes. Is it really damn funny? Definitely. This
is a movie that begins with sex vomit and goes from there.
The action picks up with Mac and Kelly Radner, played once
again with fantastic chemistry by Rogen and Rose Byrne. Still grappling with
being parents when they themselves still feel like kids, trying to maintain
their cool and relevance, they have another baby on the way and are 30 days
away from selling their home and fleeing to the suburbs.
Just when they think they’re done with out of control
college kids forever, a sorority moves into the house next door, the same one
occupied by the frat in the last movie. But this isn’t your usual sorority full
of prim, proper, wholesome young ingénues. Founded by the trio of first-year students—Shelby
(Chloe Grace Moretz), Beth (Kiersey Clemons), and Nora (Beanie Feldstein)—Kappa
Nu, as they dub themselves, is a sisterhood based on raging and avoiding the
“rapey” scene at the school’s frats. Their hard partying ways, of course,
conflict with Mac and Kelly’s interests, and the battle between young and less-young
begins anew.
That Kappa Nu is a reaction to both staid sorority life and
the sexist double standards of the male-dominated college system—an early scene
at a frat party may make your skin crawl if you’ve ever had any women in your
life you care about—is indicative of the overt progressive thread in
Neighbors 2. Sure, they may be down to get wild, but these
young women are trying to create a safe space, where they’re in control, and
where they don’t have to worry about being harassed and intimidated.
Zac Efron’s Teddy Sanders is back, shoehorned into the plot,
though he makes good use of his time and arguably becomes Sorority
Rising’s center (he also gets slathered with brisket grease at one point). After being kicked out of his apartment when his
frat bro/roommate Pete (Dave Franco) gets engaged to his boyfriend, he’s adrift
and turns to the one thing he’s ever been good at, and serves as a party mentor
for Kappa Nu. His goofy, super-hot-lost-puppy-dog shtick makes him the perfect
foil for the 18-year-old girls. He teaches them how to do practical things like
pay their rent, and they in turn move him towards enlightenment by showing him
why things like a Pimps and Hoes party isn’t particularly appealing from a
woman’s perspective.
This empowerment thread occasionally gets lost and left
behind for other concerns, and there are missed opportunities to add texture
and depth to the message. But at its best, Sorority Rising
puts a fresh, welcome feminist spin on well-worn college party comedy tropes—a
feminist icon party is a brilliant idea that I hope is a real thing that
happens, and one prank in particular is both horribly foul and cleverly skewers
gender hypocrisy when it comes to gross-out comedy in both movies and real
life.
Neighbors 2 falls into the same traps as
many previous comedy sequels, chiefly that, instead of a coherent story, it
plays out like a series of hilarious bits strung together into a loose
narrative. The first film wasn’t exactly groundbreaking, but the arc here is
somehow even more obvious and predictable.
Clocking in at a hair over 90 minutes, there are times when
Neighbors 2 feels the weight of filling the space, which
manifests in the pacing and momentum. It also shows the scattered hands of five
credited writers: Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, director Nicholas Stoller, Andrew
Jay Cohen, and Brendan O’Brien. There are a lot of
montages—at times it’s like watching a montage of montages—and there’s too much
repetition. We get it, Ike Barinholtz looks like a terrifying meth-head Juggalo
when he slaps on a clown wig and cackles. Once was enough. (Though a running
baby-with-a-vibrator joke is also great throughout—at least there are no
veins.)
Even through these doldrums, the movie is never far from a
moment of manic comedy glory. For every overextended gags that runs on too
long, there’s one like a weed heist that borders on the surreal and could have
been lifted from a suspense thriller. The best jokes, the ones that truly
stick, work because the absurdity is based in truth and the sweetness and
humanity at the core.
Without a traditional villain, it’s easy to like and root
for and sympathize with everyone involved—there’s no big bad, just incompatible,
conflicting goals. Mac and Kelly are freaked out by the prospect of having
another baby, and Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne capture the inherent fears of
parents watching their children grow up. They want to be supportive of the
sorority; they look at these young women and see their own daughter in a few
years. But they also want a good night’s rest and to sell their house. Rogen
picks up the kind of role Tom Hanks played on the regular once upon a time and
gives it a weed-and-dick-joke-infused update.
Teddy is lost, watching all of his friends move forward with
their lives while he treads water. He’s stuck in that awkward, post-college,
what-the-hell-do-I-do-with-my-life phase where it looks like everyone else has
it figured out but him; a limbo between youth and adulthood. Efron once again
shows that he can be funny as hell, and Teddy is the only character who clearly
changes or grows.
For the sorority’s part, all of their bluster masks how
afraid and insecure Shelby, Beth, Nora, and the rest are to be on their own for
the first time. They desperately try to carve out a place of their own in a
world that marginalizes them at every turn. It’s unfortunate that they’re not
particularly well-defined or fleshed out as characters, even in comparison to
their frat boy predecessors, because that would give them a more substantial
impact—there’s one real scene where they bond, and that’s it. Moretz, Clemons,
and Feldstein do what they can with the material. They’re engaging to watch and
all have strong comedy muscles to flex, but the script never gives them much to
dig into, nor does it let them take the material and go nuts with it.
The secondary characters in Neighbors
were one of the film’s strengths, adding contour to this world. In
Neighbors 2, they feel like a liability. As the main trio sorority
sisters are barely sketched out, the side players are virtually nonexistent,
with only Christine (Awkwafina) leaving any impression at all. Jimmy (Ike
Barinholtz) gets a few laughs, but he’s otherwise inconsequential, and his
wife, Paula (Carla Gallo), adds even less. The best side character is Jerrod
Carmichael, Garf from the original movie, who gets one blistering, topical
moment early on alongside fellow returnee Hannibal Buress.
Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising falls into
typical sequel traps, lacks character development, and has a haphazard script,
but it’s reflective of the societal forces that spawned it. Women are sick of
being pushed aside, same sex marriage is a normal part of the landscape, weed
isn’t a big deal. All of which is admirable. Neighbors 2 is
a comedy with more on its mind than just laughs, and fortunately, for all of its flaws, it’s also damn
funny. [Grade: B-]
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