Neighbors is a 2014 comedy about a couple with a newborn baby who do whatever they can to stop the fraternity next door.
THE STORY: Mac (Seth Rogen) and Kelly Radner (Rose Byrne) are a young couple with a new baby, a nice home and lot of responsibilities, making them miss a bit of the old days. They can’t seem to get the time to spend with their unmarried friends or even get a chance for some much needed intimacy (the baby keeps watching when they try to get it on). Along come new neighbors, whom they’ve long hoped would be family types, but alas, that dream is busted when in fact it’s a new fraternity of party boys, led by Teddy Sanders (Zac Efron) and Pete Regazolli (Dave Franco), who are on a mission to lead Delta Psi to the most epic party ever put on. Let’s just say, this puts a cramp on the quiet lifestyle of Mac and Kelly.
Director: Nicholas Stoller
Writers: Andrew Jay Cohen, Brendan O’Brien
Stars: Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne, Zac Efron, Dave Franco, Carla Gallo, Halston Sage
THE RUNDOWN: I love Rose Byrne. She does this little thing with her eyes that kind of looks sleepy and disinterested while at the same time super aware. Hard to explain. Either way, she constantly surprises me, though by now I shouldn’t be. After I got hooked on her television show Damages more than a decade ago, I kept finding her popping up in all kinds of different genres do increasingly great work. Here, she is the one to watch in a film that finds just the right mix of raunchy humor with genuine fun. This is a good time that does plenty to turn the genre on its ear.
Easily stealing the show is Byrne who takes the tropes of the whining wife/girlfriend and does the complete opposite, joining the chaos and earning plenty of laugh for it.
It’s pure fantasy as the premise itself is never believable, keeping almost exclusively to these two houses, which sort of strips a bit of the authenticity it actually kind of reaches for.
THAT MOMENT: We don’t ever want to admit that we’re growing older, even when all the telltale signs are in place, and so it is that both Mac and Kelly, who are desperate to try and rekindle some of the old fires of their youth, even as the burdens of parenthood are dulling the edges. With that in mind, when the moving truck rolls in and a group of college kids file out, it’s a little disconcerting, especially with their leader Sanders looking like a Greek god over the lot.
Still, hoping to make a good impression, they load up their baby in a stroller and decide to introduce themselves, trying also to impress on the students that it’s okay to have fun but you know, if they could … keep it down. Initially, Sanders is cool with it, if not a little snarky, but asks them to make sure they call him first before the police and everything will be fine. Then, urged by Pete, he invites them to come over and join the coming party. Flattered and feeling a little bit young again, they think about it, and later on, with their infant in bed and Kelly gripping a baby monitor in her hand, they head over to a rave already under way.
While there, Mac offers the guys a bit of his private stash, and Teddy takes to Mac as a kind of older pledge brother, the two bonding as they get drunk and share stories. Meanwhile, Kelly, still keeping one ear on the monitor, dances with the girls and connects with their free spirited partying, also getting wasted. It’s a long night of letting their hair down and while it seems to make the new neighbors close (Teddy and Mac plan to get walkie-talkies), its is only a trap as soon enough, it’s all out war between the two homes.
WHY IT MATTERS: From the start, we really feel connected with Mac and Kelly, the two starting the film by trying to have spontaneous sex in the living room in the middle of the day. It doesn’t quite work out. It’s a genuinely funny and authentic moment that sets up this kind of playful tone weighted by a bit of truth the film plays up to throughout. These two were partiers in their day and real life has sort of snuck up on them and left them without really finding closure to their past. It’s what real life does.
With Terry’s invitation, they have a chance to take a step back in time, something they really think they need, especially after they fell asleep earlier preparing to go to another party with some of their other friends. Having a baby does that.
Taking advantage of the moment, the late hour, the baby monitor, and a need to befriend their new neighbors, they stroll up to the house and join the chaos inside, instantly reverting back to their own college days, Mac smoking weed, eating mushrooms, and pounding beers while Kelly hits the dance floor and gossips with the gals.
What could have been a brief scene of the ‘adults’ losing some control, instead becomes a lengthy sequence of bonding between them all, Mac and Terry especially, the two celebrating their generational gaps (who is the best Batman?) and realizing they are more the same than different. It’s a terrific opportunity to develop the characters and by taking the time to put them all together in peace under the power of a great party, it splits from many in the genre that simply pits the young against the old. It also makes what follows all the more impactful, especially when Mac and Kelly do what Teddy asked them not to do.
Neighbors is a movie that shouldn’t be good, a party flick that seems set up to be full of bawdy boys, buxom babes and all kinds of house party clichés. What it is instead is a truly fun little squabble between characters that feels genuine, even is the premise isn’t so much. And a moment at bash kicks it all off and sets the tone for the rest of the film. Neighbors in one you should definitely drop in on.