Neighbors

I saw this film on opening day with a friend because I was bored, and did not expect much. After seeing the trailer I thought "this movie will make me laugh a bit, but will probably suck overall", and I was mistaken. I was pleasantly surprised by how funny this movie was surprisingly funny. I am not a big Seth Rogen fan, but he was funny. The biggest stand-out performance was from Zach Effron. He has come a long way since being a Disney star, and he was the reason for a good number of laughs I got from this film. I see a lot of reviews on here complaining about how dirty and vulgar this film was... did none of you read the rating? This movie is rated R for "pervasive language, strong crude and sexual content, graphic nudity, and drug use throughout"... I mean, for God's sake Rogen and Effron get in a dildo fight(which was hilarious).If you are offended by such things, a prude, or easily offended in general, you probably should not see this film. If you do not care about that, and expect a fun movie full of laughs, cussing and partying, this is a film for you. Hope you enjoy.

As I write this review, there are around 200 reviews posted. As far as I can tell, fewer than 10 of them rate this film at 7 stars or above, yet its average rating is slightly more than 7 stars. In fact, while the vast majority of reviews on the first five pages give it only 1 star, the ratings summary says that only 1.2% of those rating it gave it just 1 star.

This is a long way of saying that it's now inescapable fact that trolls, spoofers, and studio shills dominate the site. A system is only useful until enough people figure out how to game it, and this is (sadly) now the case for this site.

On to the review: Neighbors had a big challenge to overcome with me, as I just don't normally find Seth R. and his "Seth Pack" to be very funny. Unfortunately, this film fails on every level to provide either humor or entertainment. It's a rare film that can depict all characters as totally unsympathetic and get away with it. After all, the viewer needs to be able to identify with SOMEONE in a story or film, even if it's the third-party narrator. This movie has absolutely no sympathetic characters in it at all. It's the essence of comedic nihilism. I didn't like any of the characters, none of them said anything that was vaguely funny, and I didn't identify with any point of view expressed in the film. To make matters worse, the director relied solely on profanity and T&A for shock value.

Totally worthless movie. Don't waste your time.

Neighbors plays as a typical Seth Rogen meets Zac Efron comedy. Its demographic double play aside, Neighbors is very good at blending its two kinds of comedy, frathouse and new-parent angst together into a tight and consistently funny package. The film draws connections between the two house, new parents Mac and Kelly Radner (Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne) secretly crave their old wild lives, while the boys at Delta Psi look at their brotherhood as a sort of stable home environment.

Neighbors at first seems to string along many unconnected pieces then eventually we see he first connection come along and start to process as the film goes along. It is a silly comedy and many of the negative reviews seem to have complaints about this. It isn't trying to be a masterpiece or anything special but what t does, it works and there are a specific audience for these kinds of comedy.

Bad Neighbours is a great comedy that explores an interesting premise extremely effectively, even if a few jokes don't land. Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne and Zac Efron are all great. Ike Barinholtz and Dave Franco are really good. The majority of the jokes are funny and at certain points hilarious. Nicholas Stoller's direction is great and its extremely well filmed. It's also well paced and the soundtrack is really good.

Honestly, when I first saw the trailer for this, my immediate reaction was "my god, this looks terrible." But then I saw it getting pretty good reviews from critics *and* viewers, which convinced me to see it. Might be the next Animal House, I thought. It wasn't. It's a lot of low- effort comedy executed unspectacularly. I mean, maybe everyone else started finding run-of- the-mill dick jokes funny while I wasn't looking, but the most I got out of it was a chuckles maybe every 10 or so minutes. And it's not like I have a problem with crass humour, I like South Park (and other Seth Rogan movies, for that matter), this just wasn't funny.