Makers of R-rated comedies face an essential dilemma: finding brand new ways to gross out their snickering adolescent viewers. But as Neighbors demonstrates, there’s another challenge that’s just as tricky: piloting the raunchy scenario to a payoff that upholds the very middle-class values the movie gleefully profanes.
Neighbors opens in an upscale suburban Anywhereville, where a house is occupied by a standard sitcom couple: goofy, pudgy dad and improbably beautiful mom. Although they have a infant daughter, Mac (Seth Rogan) and Kelly (Rose Byrne) endeavor to keep their pre-parental cool. They’re pot-smokers and rave-goers, and when the movie begins they’re trying to have sex. They fail, embarrassed that baby Stella can see them, although Mac’s insistence on narrating the action — “this is happening!” — is just as deflating.
The real conflict begins when a college fraternity, Delta Psi Beta, moves in next door, cramming its new home with beer, babes, noise and hallucinogenic mushrooms. Mac and Kelly try to indulge the newcomers, even joining them for some of their daily parties. But the neighborly outreach doesn’t lead to quiet, and Stella can’t sleep through the racket. So the 30-something old folks call the — useless, of course — cops.
Full-scale culture war results, led by grim-eyed, often shirtless Delta president Teddy (Zac Efron) and his marginally more reasonable lieutenant, Pete (Dave Franco). Foul-mouthed Kelly is a more skilled combatant than Mac, even if she does sometimes divert her hostility away from Teddy and toward her husband. The bitter conflict encompasses condoms, exploding airbags, girl-on-girl smooches and a swordfight that uses plaster-casts of the frat boys’ penises.
Phony phalluses also featured in Neighbors director Nicholas Stoller’s 2010 farce, Get Him to the Greek. In that flick, the chubby hero was played by Jonah Hill, and his path to suburban domesticity was temporarily barred by an aggressive rock-groupie type with a dildo.
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