Review: ‘Neighbors’

“Neighbors” is a comedy about a young family being subjugated to the horror that is living next door to a college frat house, and how the young family struggles to stay young, while the frat bros struggle with being fratty and what they need to do next with their lives. Plenty of dick jokes abound throughout, but it is tempered quite well with character arcs and emotional story beats, and it all blends together for a fun, funny and still somewhat touching movie.

The movie starts with married couple Mac and Kelly (Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne) trying to have “spontaneous” sex in their new home. What makes this such a feat for the two of them is the fact that it is happening while they have a precious little baby girl, and not only is this happening shortly after the birth (since the kid can’t even stumble around yet on its own) but with the kid in the room, watching them. How can people have fun, spontaneous sex while also debating whether or not their infant child can understand that they are having sex or if she only sees shapes?

And while this scene is obviously meant to be a funny joke, it also importantly sets up a main theme of the movie, which is how this couple wants to stay young and vibrant like they were when they met in college, as opposed to the old, boring fogies they are threatening to become. Later on we see them climb into bed to go to sleep and they have to put in sleep apnea mouth guards and shit, and they try to kiss each other goodnight and it is just ridiculous. They don’t want to admit it, but they’re all grown up, their relationship has arrived at a very comfortable place, and they can’t hang with the kids anymore.

So when a whole house full of kids moves in next door in the form of some Fratty McFrattertons, lead by Frat Prez Teddy (Zac Efron) and his veep Pete (Dave Franco), Mac and Kelly are truly confronted with their own age and maturity levels, both of which are increasing against their wishes. They try to be the cool neighbors at first but quickly things get out of hand and they can’t be the cool neighbors anymore, and before you know it, neighbor feud.

Now here I do have a pretty big problem with this whole concept, and here it is: how the fuck does a frat house get permission to purchase and then move into a house in a neighborhood full of families? Is this a thing? Do people in college towns all across this country wake up one morning to find an entire FRAT HOUSE moving in next door? Cause that does reek of some bullshit to me. Wouldn’t something like that have to be zoned or something? Cause it really does sound like goddamn hell.

And then, on top of that, they throw in one quick (and I mean QUICK) scene of the members of the frat house going around to all the other neighbors on their block and somehow winning them over? No details here though, just a quick shot, a quick joke, and MOVE THE FUCK ON! Why would they gloss over this detail so quickly? Because it is a bunch of bullshit and their whole movie falls flat because there is no way these guys have these huge parties and make all this noise and create so much trash and yet only the neighbors to their immediate left complain, everyone else just suffers through the bullshit and PLUMMETING property values because…why again? Exactly. It’s bullshit.

But hey, small detail, blow through it quick and get on to the next scene and no one will notice a thing. And fortunately for the movie, everything else is quite funny, and some of the characters and their relationships to each other actually end up being interesting. I mean, Teddy and Pete could have been really stereotypical douche-bro frat dudes, but obviously this was expected going in to the movie, so these expectations get subverted in some smart ways. And also, while Mac and Kelly are the main focus of the story, considerable attention is actually paid to Teddy and Pete and they end up being more well rounded characters than one would expect in a movie like this. So when it’s all said and done, there are actually some emotional stakes behind the comedy.

“Neighbors” is good, definitely funny, a little over the top, loaded with great comedians in small roles, and a story that actually IS a story, with characters that are much more than two-dimensional. They are, like, two-and-a-half dimensional. Good stuff.