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Review: Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising Gets a C for Comedy

3 out of 5 stars.

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Any sequel for a successful movie is a challenge, but comedies seem to have the most difficulty pulling them off. The comedy sequel is rare compared to horror and action movies, and the ones we get don’t often manage to capture the initial magic that brought audiences into the theaters in the first place. The big challenge is that most big comedies are rather self-contained. They don’t ask for a follow-up with the characters; the story’s done, but these also aren’t procedurals where you can just take the characters or premise from one place to the other. Characters are vital to do comedy, even broad comedy, and who and where they are matters, which is the reason so many comedy sequels become repetitive. Fearful of hurting the formula, they don’t like changing anything. It’s a logical decision to make, but it’s also a lazy decision that often makes these look like uninspired attempts to capitalize on a previous success.

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It is therefore worth noting that while it isn’t wholly original, Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising is far more creative and ambitious as a comedy than one would expect from the trailers. Yes, the “young” couple with the house next to a frat house still needs the Greek life next door to cool it, and there’s still a focus on the older/younger generations at war, but the most interesting aspect of Neighbors 2 is actually the seemingly sincere interest not only in giving equal comedic opportunities to women, but to make a movie about feminism as a topical comedy. The decision is smart and admirable, although execution is a bit lacking.

Narratively, the movie has more threads to keep in mind than its predecessor. The “young parents” Mac and Kelly (Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne) now want to sell their house, because Kelly’s pregnant with a second child. Teddy, Zac Efron’s character, apparently suffered the most from his college war with them and can barely get an adult job with his arrest record. He still lives with frat brother Pete (Dave Franco) but is asked to leave their house when Pete gets engaged to his boyfriend. The newbies are college girls Shelby, Beth, and Nora (Chloe Grace Moretz, Kiersey Clemons, and Beanie Feldstein), who want to start their own standalone sorority because 1) their current sorority can’t throw parties, 2) frat parties they can go to tend to objectify women, which leads to them renting the frat house from the first movie, with Teddy offering service as payback, and Mac and Kelly now desperate to avoid their house sale falling through.

Right up front, let’s just say that everyone in these movies is pretty unlikable. Mac and Kelly joke a lot about being bad parents, and while we don’t see the child neglect we got in the first one, they’re still pretty bad parents, based on the stories they tell. Also, there’s the added issue that, based purely on their own stupidity, they are trying to trick another young couple into making the same mistake they made. (Twice!) Teddy is arguably a little more tolerable here than in the first movie, primarily because it’s easier to feel pity for a lovable loser than a big man on campus, and the sorority clearly thinks he’s a little sad for hanging around, too. As for the sorority girls (also including Clara Mamet and rapper-comic Awkafina), they are more likable than the frat in the first one, but that isn’t a ringing endorsement. But, all that also means there aren’t really victims or victors in the movie, and that is ultimately to its benefit.

What’s frustrating, however, are the shortcuts taken and the lack of originality behind the comedy sequences. A lot of the movie just doesn’t make a lot of sense (especially for anyone’s understanding of real-estate and college). It’s totally true that there are rules about sorority conduct that are in place to mandate more conservative behavior from girls than frat boys (I literally went to a school with blue laws to keep sorority houses out of the town), so hitting on that aspect is a good idea and should be full of comedy potential. But this isn’t a female-empowering version of Old School or Everybody Wants Some (which the sorority premise is closer to), and the sorority gets shortchanged by focusing on Mac and Teddy and underwriting Kelly, which is a baffling decision considering Byrne’s comic abilities and the ability to have a crisis about her adulthood and do another gender swap. Instead, there’s just entirely too much focus on Rogen and Efron’s characters for a movie that wants to tell a similar story but focus on a different gender, but also wants to be more than a superficial gender swap.

And yet, it is admirable that the team behind a previous movie that leaned so heavily on dude-bro comedy wants to tackle feminism and put the topic front and center. It’s a risk that Rogen could alienate the overlapping audience he has that’s currently raging against the Ghostbusters remake, and they seem to consistently be dancing around some interesting issues they’re personally interested in addressing. They touch on using political correctness to justify questionable behavior and what micro-aggressions really mean, and the writers also turn the tables on the men and ask them their role in the current gender debate. Rogen and Efron aren’t anti-feminist men and seem genuinely troubled when their own mistakes and stereotypes about women are put into focus (and they’re embarrassed when Ike Barinholtz yells “men’s rights”). They clearly know it’s time to change, and want to make changes, but the issue is such a hot button that they don’t seem sure how to maneuver in this brave new world they’re venturing into. They’re too afraid to really go deep and mine the comic fields, so when they try, the jokes simply fall a little short. Really, they should have taken some lessons from their costar, Jerrod Carmichael, who talks about big issues every week with his sitcom. (He’s right there, in the movie.)

Speaking of the writing, it’s also conspicuous that in a movie that talks A LOT about feminism, there are no female writers among the five writers credited. Except for the hilarious team of Maria Blasucci and Amanda Lund (Ghost Girls), who worked as associate producers, the creative team’s still primarily male, and it’s noticeable. The writing of the younger women isn’t as sharp as the writing throughout the rest of the movie. Curious, I checked, and the actresses playing the sorority improvised a lot of their material, which might be the reason that dialogue seems so different and slower than the rest, and as much as Byrne tries to sell a few moments, she’s always unfairly treated more like a sidekick than costar (although thankfully not as the wife-mom-nag stereotype in most comedies).

When the focus happens to be on the couple (Rogen and Bryne have good comic chemistry) or the sorority’s hijinks, the movie can be pretty funny (also Efron as a doofus turns out to be the best version we’ve seen in a while). The initial scenes with Moretz, Clemons, and Feldstein are pretty good and establish a nice friendship to string comedy bits on. It’s the war here that just doesn’t work. Things escalate too fast and kind of illogically, and the big elaborate jokes never generate as many laughs as they’re structured to, often feel repetitive, and frequently go over the edge and just become cruel. The problem with this movie—and maybe most of Seth Rogen/Evan Goldberg’s movies—is the smaller character beats hit better than the more elaborate/gross-out moments.

Ultimately, I find my self conflicted on Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising. It’s a movie I want to encourage and see more like it the future. It’s often enjoyable and harmless, even if not as funny as it should be, and I also see that this is a worthwhile risk they took (financially and with their audiences). I would even argue that the last movie we got about college girls, Pitch Perfect 2, is less interested in being socially relevant than this movie. It doesn’t always work (the first one wasn’t especially consistent either), but I also know what they were attempting and admire it enough to want to encourage Rogen and Goldberg to try again. Next time, they need to take all those good intentions and put forth a lot more effort.

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