Neighbors

As a comedy, Neighbors lacks momentum.  It has some laughs, but they are never as big as they should be.  The movie never quite builds.  It's a series of gross out gags strung together by a very loose plot of feuding neighbors.  I'm not saying this approach could not work.  I'm saying it doesn't work here, given the sporadic and uneven nature of the film.

And yet, I have to pause and wonder if I wouldn't have enjoyed it a little bit more if I didn't feel like the ad campaign gave away all the best gags.  Sadly, this is yet another case of the trailers showing the best the movie has to offer.  All you're paying for with the ticket price is to watch the filler that comes in-between.  Comedy movies usually tend to be the main victims of this trend.  I understand that it's the job of the trailer to show some highlight gags, but sitting through the full 97 minute film, I felt like I had watched it already.  Even if I hadn't seen the trailers, I probably still would have been annoyed by the slapdash approach that director Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) employs.  It doesn't take long for the movie to resemble a series of comic sketches looking for something to connect them.

The plot involves married couple, Mac (Seth Rogen) and Kelly (Rose Byrne), as they struggle to adjust to their new lives with a baby girl, and a home in the suburbs.  The early scenes depicting the couple trying to balance out their responsibilities as new parents, and trying to hold onto the active and social lives they used to enjoy before the baby, are when the film is at its sharpest and most truthful.  They are so bored in their new lives, they even get excited over the idea that a gay couple may be moving into the house next door.  Alas, when the moving trucks arrive at the neighboring home, it's not the couple they were expecting, but a hard-partying Fraternity that moves in.  They party and play loud music at all hours of the night - not the best conditions when you have a fussy baby who needs to keep a sleep schedule.

Mac and Kelly do try to make friends with the Fraternity leaders, Teddy (Zac Efron) and Pete (Dave Franco), but their efforts largely backfire.  This leads to the married couple trying to force the Fraternity out of their home through a variety of over the top means.  In turn, this leads to the Frat boys playing elaborate pranks on the couple.  Things escalate until it is all-out war between the two homes.  Just by reading the premise and the names involved both on and off the camera, you can easily see the comedic potential in the idea.  But the movie doesn't try hard enough.  There are also severe lapses in logic to be found throughout, such as why doesn't anyone else in the neighborhood seem to notice or complain about what's going on in the Frat house?  The movie makes a halfhearted attempt to explain this with a throwaway five second gag, but it's not satisfactory enough. 

I wouldn't mind things like this if Neighbors was funnier, but like I said before, it just doesn't seem to build.  There are long lagging periods between the big gags which, like I also mentioned before, most have already been given away in the trailer.  That's not to say there's nothing to look forward to.  A scene where Mac breaks his wife's breast pump at the worst possible time easily gets the biggest laughs in the movie.  But, the film never finds a way to top this moment.  There's something oddly pedestrian about this gross-out comedy.  Outside of a couple bawdy laughs, the movie plays it a little too safe.  We never get the sense that the filmmakers are going for broke.  You can't be afraid to go for broke when you're making a Frat house comedy.  When all is said and done, it just doesn't feel outrageous enough. 

And like a lot of recent raunchy comedies, this is a movie that wants to have its breast and dick jokes, and warm our hearts, too.  There are a couple scenes where lead Frat boy Teddy frets over his future after college, because he just doesn't study hard enough.  These scenes feel like they were added in to make the character more sympathetic, and they never pay off.  Not that the movie is very interested in making us care about these characters in the first place.  Everyone on the screen exists to either set up or be the victim of a prank or gag.  This makes it impossible to pick a side in the escalating war, since I honestly didn't care about either side.  The screenplay simply treads water, waiting to set up the next joke, ignoring everything else that could have made the film a better experience.

Simply put, Neighbors is flat, instead of the raucous fun it should have been.  I came to the film expecting a good time, and as it started to wind down, I was still waiting.  I will say this, however - The twin girls who play the baby are darn adorable.  When you walk out of a raunchy college comedy, and the main thing you remember is the cute baby, you know the movie did not work for you.

See the movie times in your area or buy the DVD at Amazon.com!

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