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.

While I didn't quite find this movie as hideous as many others clearly do, the combination of obvious gags, badly developed characters and lazy acting makes for a fairly forgettable experience.

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.

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.