Capitalizing on the success of the 2014 original, Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising is every bit as wickedly twisted and outrageously amusing as the first. It would’ve been easy to reuse the same jokes and keep the characters exactly like they were in the first film; but, as the returning ensemble goes, they’ve all matured – well, at least sort of. A Feminist Icon-themed sorority party might be a great idea, but a bunch of angry young women chasing down a frightened man and stripping him naked is still sexual assault. With that, Neighbors 2 confirms that its comedy lies in the crisis of the prototypical hot dude-one whose significance, shockingly, isn’t automatically taken for granted.
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The sorority is run by Shelby (Chloë Grace Moretz), Beth (Clemons) and Nora (Beanie Feldstein), and they started it because frat bros are so rapey and they wanted to party on their own terms. During a scene set at a college tailgate party – which happens to be one of our all-time favorite scenes in any movie EVER – Rose’s Kelly helps grease up Zac’s shirtless alter ego Teddy by rubbing the juices from a slab of meat being grilled during the tailgate onto his buff bod as he prepares to distract the members of Kappa Nu with a steamy strip tease.
Since Neighbors came out in 2014, much has changed for women and feminism. When one character instructs another to “never drink the punch”, like it’s a well-known fact of life, it could be a line from The Hunting Ground.
There are other unexpectedly progressive aspects to Neighbors 2. “We really were a sorority”, she added.
Teddy (Zac Efron)? Not so much. Their old house is in escrow and as long as nothing goes wrong in the next 30 days they’ll be able to make their big move.
And so, another generation-gap rivalry begins. They’ve made a decision to join a sorority, but the stern sorority president (Selena Gomez) informs them that alcohol and drugs are not permitted and, even more discouraging, sororities in the USA can not throw parties. Yes, it is the same house that was once occupied by Teddy and his fraternity in the first film. Lazy? Maybe, but in a Hollywood starving for female-fronted movies of any stripe, it still qualifies as revolutionary. The comedy and gags here are more about shocking and revolting the audience rather than getting genuine laughs. The girls act like villains, but the screenplay is unwilling to present them unsympathetically. “And he’s a d- about it”, Rogen laughs. The upshot is that “Neighbors 2” is mostly unpleasant without being amusing or ultimately satisfying. The script also lacks the sense of pushing a concept to the outer limits that Rogen and co-writer Evan Goldberg pulled off so well in Superbad and This Is The End. Nope. And the joke’s on us because director Nicholas Stoller and a team of screenwriters, including Rogen, poke fun at their own cash-in premise and then get in wicked digs at 2.0 stoners and sexists.
And at only 92 minutes, the film’s hurry to rush through its plethora of characters becomes a strength, because we don’t have enough time to get bored by any one scene. But boy, do they drive this piece of tripe into the ground – with gusto. “Let’s do what parents do better than anything: Stop young people from having fun”, Rogen yells as a rallying cry.
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