Seth Rogen’s back in cuddly man-child form, but it’s Byrne and Efron who are the real surprises.
Glen Wilson/Universal Pictures
Despite what the promotional material may have you believe, the central struggle in Neighbors, the gleefully deviant new comedy starring Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne, and Zac Efron, is not about realizing it's time to grow up.
Mac and Kelly Radner, the married couple played by Rogen and Byrne, are pretty clear on having arrived at unmistakable adulthood: They have a baby and have sunk their savings into a house on a sunny suburban street in the college town of Ardendale. Mac works in an office, though he still makes time to get high outside with his buddy Jimmy (The Mindy Project's Ike Barinholtz), while Kelly takes little Stella to Mommy and Me classes, though she describes them in terms that do the film's R rating proud.
Instead, the tarter lesson Mac and Kelly have to learn in Neighbors, which opens on Friday, is not so much that they're grown up, but that they're glad to be grown up and don't actually miss the partying life they recently left behind. Arriving as hard-bodied reminders of what it's like to be young, carefree, and constantly wasted are the members of the Delta Psi fraternity, who, to the Radners' dread (they were hoping for a gay couple), move in next door under the leadership of President Teddy Sanders (Zac Efron).
Glen Wilson/Universal Pictures
Mac and Kelly are so eager to prove they're not the typical straitlaced suburban parents that they gift their new neighbors with a joint during their first fawning visit to request they keep the noise down. Later, they end up getting drawn into debauchery that involves magic mushrooms, some uproarious cross-generational Batman impressions, and staying up until dawn while keeping one ear on the baby monitor. It's like having a party that never ends right next door.
But the novelty of that only charms the Radners for about a day, until it's 4 in the morning the next night, the music's blaring, and Teddy isn't answering their calls. At that point, they turn to the cops, and from then on, it's war.
Neighbors is directed by Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall and The Five-Year Engagement) and written by Andrew J. Cohen and Brendan O'Brien (the minds behind IFC's upcoming series American Storage with Rob Huebel). But if there's a particular filmography to which Neighbors feels like it most belongs, it's Rogen's. The actor has been guiding cuddly man-children in slow steps toward responsibility and empathy since his Freaks and Geeks days, and Mac's a natural continuation of Rogen's path in Knocked Up, committed to his new life but still looking longingly back at his old one. He's funny, but he's familiar.
Byrne and Efron, however, are trying something new here.
Rose Byrne And Zac Efron Defy Expectations In The Very Funny "Neighbors"
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