"Neighbors" (2014)

This recent Age of Apatow has featured comedies built on an interesting tension between protagonists (almost entirely male) refusing to grow up while discovering it necessary and even prudent to grow up. Everything even remotely associated with Judd Apatow, whether it’s Knocked Up or the television series Girls, is marked by individuals primarily in their late twenties or early thirties facing up to the fact that their youthful partying days are fading and that they are, or ought to be, responsible adults. This realization though always comes with some difficulty and therein lies the majority of the humor of Neighbors.

Apatow regular Seth Rogen stars alongside Rose Byrne as a thirty-something couple with a baby girl and newly purchased house. They have the outward trappings of individuals who have left behind their college years, but both feel stifled and bored by 9 to 5 work and changing diapers. In moves a fraternity house next door led by Zach Efron and Dave Franco. Rogen and Byrne want to seem cool around their younger neighbors while simultaneously keeping the noise levels down. They give off mixed signals, showing up at the first party of the semester. Later when they remember that for responsibility-free frats bros the party never has to end, they call the cops. This leads to escalating tit for tat revenge schemes from both sides.

There is a predictable throughline here. The couple tries to get the fraternity kicked off campus and the frat retaliates, and life lessons are learned amongst the raunch. But the emotional material here doesn’t feel shoehorned in but rather feels of a piece of the silliness. Nicholas Stoller’s direction and Andrew J. Cohen and Brendan O'Brien’s script invest it with more. The partying and the prank war lead to shenanigans but there’s an unmistakable sadness to all of this. Franco and, especially and surprisingly (and quite pleasantly), Efron make their characters more than just laughable douches; there’s a real consciousness about the limitations of the lifestyle and a dawning, aching realization that eventually college ends. It’s that awareness, that reflection that each pair provides the other one, that gives the film its emotional center from which to spring off silly, highly amusing jokes and sight gags. 

A lot has been said about how Byrne is given ample and equal opportunity to get as down and dirty as her co-stars. Typically we see female characters as nags or scolds but here Rogen and Byrne are made partners in crime. Byrne is given a number of the most hilarious moments and she is the creator of some of the most unrestrained chaos at hand. It’s a delight to witness. I defer to Christy’s Lemire’s eloquent description: “Her character also orchestrates the film’s finest sequence: a fluidly staged and edited series of manipulations involving shots and stolen kisses that’s downright Shakespearean.”

Grade: B