I don’t think I was even aware of Neighbors being in theaters. Apparently it made a lot of money. Is it believable? Well, there’s a bit of a premise suspension of disbelief, but getting past that there’s a pretty good comedy there. Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne star as Mac and Kelly, a couple in their early 30s with a new house, a baby and a good life. Then a fraternity literally moves in next door. Dave Franco and Zac Efron star as Pete and Teddy, the leaders of the fraternity. Initially the frat agrees to keep things down as long as the couple agrees to contact them first and not the police. Of course the frat gets rather rowdy and the couple need to call the police. Why did none of the other neighbors complain?
Anything can be made to be funny, but really good comedy has a grounding in reality. Neighbors does not have that.
The night the fraternity moves in Mac and Kelly go next door to ask them to keep the noise down. Pete and Teddy ask the couple in and they party (using the baby monitor). The next night Mac and Kelly try to call Pete and Teddy to keep the noise down (instead of simply walking next door for some inexplicable reason) and wind up calling the police when there is no response.
After the police are called the fraternity uses footage of the one night Mac and Kelly partied with the fraternity and the police then say they won’t come over and to not call again. Pete and Teddy then retaliate by throwing parties every night and Mac and Kelly try to get the fraternity in trouble with the university.
About halfway through there’s a sequence where Kelly’s breasts are engorged because she hasn’t fed the baby in a while. What happens is so unrealistic it isn’t funny. I suppose if you haven’t had much experience in this department it would be funny, but I couldn’t find the humor in it. It is this inherent lack of grounding in reality that Neighbors lacks that stops it from being as funny as it thinks it is. There are some funny bits, but it’s almost like a short that got expanded too much for its own good.
There’s a bit of a sub-plot, at least in the beginning, dealing with Mac’s place of employment. This feels unnecessary and detracts from what the focus of the film should be, but establishes Mac’s friend, though it could have been done another way that didn’t take from the main story. Special features include deleted/alternate scenes, a gag reel, some featurettes and more. None of which make the main feature any better.
While Neighbors does have some funny moments the underlying logic problems with the plot prevented me from finding it as funny as I had wanted to. I was disappointed. Maybe I’m about 20 years too old for it.