Bad Neighbours

The phrase "something for everyone" is a tricky one when it comes to movies. On the one hand, creating an experience that attempts to appeal to every demographic could end up being a washed-out, derivative piece of trash that appeals to none. On the other, it could end up being Bad Neighbours. A flick that well and truly earns its R rating, it succeeds in providing accommodating humour to the swag-touting, yolo-spouting dudebro generation and the older, more comedically-refined Bill Murray generation. Think Family Guy today as opposed to The Simpsons in 1997. Can you guess from that completely impartial comparison which of the two I belong to? A scene in which two young college boys trade variations on the phrase "Bros before Hoes" for upwards of 90 seconds is contrasted with one in which a Robert De Niro-themed party has some hilariously confused guests, including Samuel L. Jackson in Jackie Brown and Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman, that eventually descends into a cacophony of terrible impressions. Bad Neighbours' greatest strength lies in its respect for both camps. It's okay if I didn't find two guys fighting by pushing dildos into each other's mouths hilarious, because right around the corner is an exchange of dialogue between a young guy named Garfield and a socially maladjusted cop who wants to know if he hates Mondays and loves lasagna. It approaches both styles of comedy with complete conviction, and it's only in this way that it succeeds where many others have failed.

If I were to criticise this, as a movie, I would have to start with the fact that it fails at being a movie. Its 90 minute run time is a collection of disparate sketches based around the central idea of an older couple attempting to evict the noisy frat house next door. This wouldn't be a problem if the flick wasn't also occasionally haphazardly trying to become a full-fledged narrative. Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne are introduced attempting spontaneous living-room sex, but are thwarted by their baby who seems incapable of not looking at them, even when her chair has been turned to face the wall. This desire to hold onto their youth comes back when it's convenient, such as their obvious unwillingness to just call the cops when the war between houses escalates to dangerous levels because they finally have some drama in their lives again, or in their more subtle nonchalance at their baby munching on a balloon until they realise it's a condom, because an easily-potential suffocation isn't anything worth worrying about until it's also a potential fucked-up crazy story to tell their friends about their super exciting life. This would be fine, and maybe even great, if the movie weren't so quick to ditch this when it has an hilarious new sketch to chuck the characters into. Their depth disappears for the sake of laughs. Either approach works, but not in tandem.

This tonal schizophrenia extends to the frat house as well. While Zac Efron and Dave Franco are initially presented as good dudes willing to succumb to any level to protect their way of life, the film awkwardly tries to inject some level of motivation into their cause by way of relatively serious scenes of reflective dialogue regarding their fraternity. What Franco sees as a temporary and ultimately false good time until his solid grades get him somewhere real, Efron sees as his one and only chance to reign over something given his unwillingness to gain any sort of academic integrity ("Lame," he so eloquently puts it when the AT&T recruiter tells him his pitiful GPA won't get him any sort of professional attention). Once again, this is fine, but not in contrast with the rest of the film. In a relatively dark comedy, scenes that try to make you connect emotionally to the characters ring hollow. Perhaps it would have worked better treated as some form of satire as opposed to genuineness, something that these scenes occasionally threaten to be, examples being when Franco walks in on Efron staring intently at their Wall of Fame and remarks, "Wow, you're really villain-ing it up here...", or when Rogen and Efron are discussing the film's events in the last minutes and Rogen says, "Yeah, things really escalated quickly between us. Almost too quickly." Instead, it just serves to pump the brakes on a movie that isn't in need of any of it.

Bad Neighbours also suffers from the mistake I see a lot of flicks making these days: references to pop-culture content that is only presently relevant. Yes, it's kind-of-not-really funny right now for a newly single heterosexual male to be singing the praises of a casual sex matchmaking app called Grindr, in spite of the high frequency of men on there, but in less than a year, Grindr will have been eclipsed by the new big player, rendering the gag as irrelevant as the Myspace joke in Superbad. This isn't necessarily a new sin, it's just something I've seen in growing frequency recently. Perhaps it's part of the new type of comedy young people appreciate that I do not. And honestly, that's probably it. I didn't appreciate an extended history lesson on this particular fraternity's creation of beer pong, a kid shouting "YOLO!" and running away after receiving threats of violence or a grown man having breast milk shot into his face by his wife for yucks. What I did appreciate were the hilarious puns about cows quietly shared between the loving couple following the aforementioned, a code used by the frat house to break up a party pulled from a 1994 Outkast album and cartoon logic being employed by Rose Byrne to distract a stoned frat boy dangerously close to discovering her under a table (I nearly died). I'm fully aware of my total bias, but fuck you. Half of this movie was made for me. Stick to your shitty other half. Hang on a second, though. In the end, that's kind of where the point lies. All of this pompous, over-blown critical analysis goes out the window for a film like Bad Neighbours, replaced only by the tried and true golden question: Was it entertaining? There were moments in this movie that made me laugh harder than I have for a long time. I imagine the kids I feel completely alienated by will feel the same way for different reasons. Job well done.