NEIGHBORS 2: A Funny Enough Follow-Up But An Inessential Sequel

Now playing at a multiplex near you:

NEIGHBORS 2: SORORITY RISING

(Dir. Nicholas Stoller, 2016)

“Let’s do what parents do best, stop young people from having fun!” Seth Rogen enthusiastically implores in this sequel to the 2014 hit comedy NEIGHBORS, in which Rogen and wife, Rose Byrne, now have to contend with the wild shenanigans of a sorority next door.

It’s one of those ‘why does the same thing keep happening to us?’ scenarios which calls attention to the notion that this sequel really isn’t necessary, but the first one made almost $300 million worldwide so you just know that it was incredibly inevitable nonetheless.

Chloë Grace Moretz plays Shelby, a rebellious freshwoman at the fictional Braxton University who, when she finds out that only fraternities can throw parties decides to start her own sorority – Kappa Kappa Nu – with her new friends Beth (Kiersey Clemons), and Nora (Beanie Feldstein).

But, of course, their choice for their sorority’s headquarters is the same house that was run by Zac Efron and co. for their fraternity Delta Psi Beta in the first film. Efron, who’s now a directionless post-nongraduate with a police record from the events of the original, becomes a mentor to Shelby and the girls of Nu, showing them how to raise enough money to stay afloat, host killer parties, and piss off their neighbors.

That would be Rogen and Byrne, reprising their roles as Mac and Kelly Radner, who are trying to sell their house as they have a second baby on the way. Mac and Kelly’s house is in escrow for 30 days so the new buyers (Sam Richardson and Abbi Jacobson) could potentially withdraw their offer if they happen to stop by and find out about the wild partying next door.

Mac and Kelly try to make a deal with Shelby to keep the noise down for the next month but, yep, it doesn’t go well, especially with Teddy throwing shade on the Radners, and suddenly “it’s on!” Shelby declares. “Nothing’s on!” Kelly protests to no avail.

Things heat up when Teddy gets voted out of the house by the girls, and he joins forces with Mac and Kelly to shut down the sorority. With the help of the desperate couple’s best friends (Ike Barinholtz and Carla Gallo), Mac, Kelly, and Teddy plot to steal the sorority’s weed stash at a tailgate event so that the girls won’t have rent money.

This is arguably the film’s most hilarious highlight as it involves a chaotic chase through crazy crowds of college kids that made the audience at my screening as noisy as the people on screen.

NIEGHBORS 2 keeps a steady stream of laughs going through its gross-out pranks –such as used tampons being pelted against windows, vomiting, and a sight gag involving Efron’s balls –the relatability of its regular folks’ dialogue (Rogen and Byrne’s exchanges as a married couple who are on the same page are still endearing), and its continuous goofiness which even makes a winner out of a reprisal of the airbag joke from the first film.

So many laughs in fact that I can overlook the crudeness of the filmmaking, which isn’t very visually stylish - cinematographer Brandon Trost, whose shot several of Rogen’s pictures, has done way better before - or particularly well edited. But who’s going to go see this film for art reasons? Folks want lots of laughs from a film like this and it definitely delivers.

And they've certainly assembled a great supporting cast of laugh getters including the returning Dave Franco, Christopher Mintz-Plasse (forever Mc Lovin), Jerod Carmichael, and Hannibal Buress who are joined by a cluster of welcome cameos by the likes of Lisa Kudrow, Kelsey Grammer, and SNL's Kyle Mooney.

Rogen and crew, which includes longtime writing partner Evan Goldberg, Andrew J. Cohen, Brendan O'Brien, and director Nicholas Stoller (all returning collaborators from the original), may have not pulled off an essential sequel by any means, but they’ve fashioned what I consider a funny enough follow-up. So it’s true that sloppy seconds can still be worthwhile, but here’s hoping that these guys take a hard pass on thirds.

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NEIGHBORS: A High Concept Comedy That Never Becomes Overwhelmed By Its Concept

Guest reviewer William Fonvielle, of the blog Filmvielle, takes on:

NEIGHBORS (Dir. Nicholas Stoller, 2014)

Well how 'bout that. Lend it to this silly battle of Seth Rogen versus Zac Efron to produce the unofficial State Of The American Comedy. Raucously funny, tightly paced, and oddly thoughtful without being oppressively so, NEIGHBORS is one of those comedies where so much of what matters clicks, you're even willing to forgive the few parts that don't.

If it carries with it any sort of dread, it's only the countdown to the inevitable horrible sequel that doesn't understand any part of what made the original special.

An oddly omnipresent theme in recent comedies, particularly those produced or directed by Judd Apatow, is the need for adolescent males to leave their childish habits behind. The 40-year-old virgin accepted that he could no longer substitute action figures for companionship.

Rogen in KNOCKED UP didn't shirk the lifetime of responsibilities from his one-night stand. Instead of moping over his break-up in FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL (also directed by Nicholas Stoller), Jason Segel focuses his energy into his dream project about puppet vampires.

It's a simple concept, getting surprising mileage because each of these respective movies seems to genuinely believe what it's preaching. And it's not without lineage. If, as everyone suggests, Apatow is the closest we have to a Harold Ramis heir, then his movies are a direct continuation of Ramis' "snobs vs. slobs" classics (STRIPES, ANIMAL HOUSE, etc). Not an exact echo, mind you. Just carrying the torch further down the road - Apatow's movies relish the sight of grown men getting into mischief, but they invariably arrive at the point in the third act when enough is enough and it's time to grow up.

So where does that leave NEIGHBORS here in 2014? On the surface, you have a classic Ramis battle. A rowdy frat house (led by a shockingly adept Efron), whose bongs puff smoke with the same thoroughness as their stereos blast loud music, move in to the house next to a young newlywed couple (Rogen and Rose Byrne). The bros dreams of partytime antics so legendary, they can land on their frat's wall of fame. The young couple wants nothing more than blissful, suburban peace for themselves and their infant daughter. Snobs and slobs, enter the ring!

Wait a sec, though. Stoller immediately subverts expectations by casting Rogen not as the stoner party animal, but as half of the husband/wife team. That's right. Seth Rogen, once among the freakiest of the Freaks And Geeks, now convincingly stands as a movie's bastion of adulthood. Essentially, Stoller and screenwriters Andrew J. Cohen and Brendan O'Brien take their standard Ramis frame, plug in Apatow's favorite Boy Who Must Grow Up into the role of Boy Who Already IS Grown Up, and make that character and his wife the audience surrogate. 

And are the couple's demands really that extreme? They're not against partying. Hell, the movie opens with them brazenly having sex in the living room while their wide-eyed child gazes on. They're just trying to create a normal life for themselves in the process.

Ultimately this results in neither a Ramis cautionary tale of excess partying (where there are no consequences) or an Apatow cautionary tale of excess adolescence (in which there are no consequences for a while, until there are), but an impressive summation of both. There is where American comedy was. NEIGHBORS shows you where it leads.

All the more impressive is that Stoller doesn't club you over the head with this either. With each passing movie he grows more skilled as a true director of comedy. Not a mere assembler of scenes, but a director. A director makes the hard choices. He knows when to let his talented performers riff, and more importantly, he knows when to judiciously bring the editing blade down. The movie contains a few fantastic examples of actors running with a concept (witness Efron and frat brother Dave Franco's bit on bros vs. hos), but it still runs a tight 96 minutes and damn well means it. Apart from any scholarly examination you or I might bring to the table, this is fundamentally a movie that sprouts from a solid concept, embodies it with distinct characterizations, then honestly follows those characters and that concept as far as they go.

A comedy that decided what it wanted to be and made choices along the way to make that happen.

And by the end, Stoller and his team prove themselves adept at the fine art of having their cake and eating it too. After two acts that take great relish in the joy of watching mischief, an uneasy feeling began a-boiling in my stomach. Stoller and his writers overall did a nice job of adding layers to their characters along the way - Efron fears graduating college and entering a world where he doesn't matter, while Rogen and Byrne worry that becoming a couple who just wants a night of peace with their kid means their youth is effectively killed. All this works nicely as background to the action.

But will NEIGHBORS unfortunately remember that a story requires an end, and then fall into the trap of blatantly Imparting A Lesson? 

What makes NEIGHBORS so impressive is as it arrives at the finish line, it manages to simultaneously hit the gas while leaning on the brakes. The bawdy, lets-have-a-good-time nature of the movie never lets up. If anything, it only escalates. But Stoller ultimately never sides with anyone, and he takes a step back with these characters, by now so well established, and allows us to see things from everyone's point of view.

When Rogen and Byrne finally lie in bed in the end and lovingly coo over such boring things as the smell of freshly ground coffee, it plays not as a joke. NEIGHBORS means it. But when Efron gazes at the extremest of the extreme party he hath wrought as a source of genuine pride and accomplishment, it plays not as a moment of pity. NEIGHBORS means that too. Stoller never actively judges nor supports any one character. Instead he has the temerity to suggest they might both be right, a concept he subtly weaves between the laughs. There's a place for partying, there's a place for adulthood, and they both matter.

One hell of a juggling act, this movie is. It's a high concept comedy that never becomes overwhelmed by the concept. It's a loving embodiment of both the Ramis and Apatow schools of comedy while simultaneously tweaking the formulas in both small and meaningful ways (lets not gloss over the fact that instead of a shrill nag, the lead female is Rogen's equal partner in crime). And it's a movie that will make you cackle to the point of missing lines.

All NEIGHBORS had to do was make us laugh. How nice that it decided to do more.

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