Neighbors

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.

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.

Neighbors is one of those hate it or love it titles. Many people dislike this type of comedy calling it stupid and pointless. While I quite enjoy serious and high-quality movies, sometimes I just want to lay on the couch and watch 90 minutes of high-quality stupid things that just make me laugh a lot. Neighbors is just this type of movie - sit back, relax and just have a laugh - not everything we watch has to be a life-changing experience.

As far as actors go I think everybody did their work great. Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne have a great chemistry and really make all the scenes work. Do not let yourself be fooled by the low rating here - Neighbors is a good comedy with loads of funny moments that would not let you get bored while watching it.

I'm struggling to understand how this got such good reviews. I usually rate the IMDb score as the gold standard but something has gone seriously wrong here. I did see the trailer, it was good and contained the only laughs of the movie. The movie was truly the most tedious thing I have ever experienced. Why did it get such good reviews from critics and such a high score on IMDb? User reviews here are spot on. Not a single good review. The reviewer above who mentioned he had sat down to more entertaining bowel movements surpassed any joke in the film.

Something is very wrong here.