Neighbors (2014)

Add a fraternity lead by a hot guy, an Australian hormonal mother and a chubby wannabe-hipster father. What do you get? Bad Neighbours. The old peace seekers versus the young noisy hooligans. Standard formula is standard. That is literally the plot. Yet, this allows creativity and innovation to be injected into the film to bring out the hilarity. Surprisingly, this has several funny moments (even after the nth viewing). Ranging from Robert De Niro impression parties ("are you talkin' to me?"), weird hazing sessions and a dance off to the background music of Flo Rida. Random, but somehow oddly amusing that does conjure up a few laughs. Some of the jokes are high on the profanity level and does tend to feel like a competition to see how much the film can gross you out. Grows tiresome unfortunately. Acting all round was functional. Zac Efron has come along way since High School Musical and luckily has good comedic timing. Sure he looks fantastic...heavenly...I would even say Godly, but he can act. Seth Rogen is Seth Rogen. Rose Byrne pulls in a more natural performance and is a personal favourite of mine. Aside from that, it never pushes itself to more than just a crude comedy. If you like that, then great. I however like wit and subtle humour. That's not to say I didn't enjoy this, in fact in terms of recent comedies this is ranked highly. Also, the air bag scenes had horrendous human CGI that just detracted from everything else. If you couldn't do it without CGI, don't do it at all...especially in a comedy like this that utilises many props to give that sense of authenticity. Slight nitpicks but they do amount to negatives towards the film. It's undeniably watchable and a good comedy, but its contents grows tiresome as the runtime goes on.

(Flash Review)A young couple with an infant child has a fraternity buy a house for sale next door. Cue immature comedy scenarios of both 'parties' not getting along because of, you guessed it, rambunctious 'parties' – zing! This is moderately more funny if you are a parent as you have the perspectives of: wish I could go out and live it up but I can't because I have an infant at home and let's be cool with the young neighbors because even though we are older, we are still cool. Lewd humor, scheming and substance abuse ensues. Who will get the last laugh? The end. It has some funny gags, many bad jokes and a plausibly core story as a foundation for the humor. It was OK and better than many current teen-focused comedies.

Seriously? What happened to real comedy? Hollywood has become a haunt of jackals. Seriously, there's nothing left folks. Penises flapping in the wind, sperm on people's faces, dildos, children being used sexually for jokes...It's the likes of Seth Rogen and his ilk that are destroying any remnant of morality left in the West. The peculiar part of all these kinds of filth movies...WHO is behind it, WHO promotes it, WHO PUSHES this repulsive snot down everyone's throat? Societies tend to grow and expand and experience golden ages or at least build toward this half-remembered "ideal" of a golden-age...however, when society becomes depraved and immorality is rampant, you know it's VERY near it's end. Welcome to the end. Basically stupefying pornography here. Nothing more. Yep. It's what "they" want for you and your children. You did nothing. You didn't even try. Welcome to the end of your civilization.

For what this is, this is just fine. The whole gambit, which is the difference between Appatow stuff that work and those that don't, is to have skits that mask themselves out by spontaneity and characters that you can buy as people who are troubled by real stuff before they have to morph for the cartoon. They do it here mostly. A lot of it is down to Rogen and Byrne conveying a great vexation.It's about this couple of 30 year olds who have ushered into proper adulthood, bought their first house in the suburbs and just had a baby. The film begins with the notion that maybe they would like to party once in a while but this new life is too hectic. What do you know, a sorority moves next-door, reminder of crazy youth they have to leave behind and are probably better off for it.Enjoyable to watch overall and more of a breeze than not, which is what I expect to get out of a night with this.