#Review Neighbours 2 : Sorority Rising

In 2014 we found out what it would be like for a slightly older and more conservative Seth Rogen character to live next door to a house of wild frat boys, more in line with the ones he usually plays. The resulting zany battle between rowdy fraternity brothers and a newly married couple, each trying to drive the other out of the neighborhood, was a hilarious spectacle. I’m speaking of course of the Nicholas Stoller directed Neighbors. Well, this Friday will see the release of Neighbors 2: Sorority Wars, with all of the main cast as well as Stoller returning. Now, a couple of weeks ago I wrote a piece where I lambasted Hollywood for it’s current trend of flooding movie screens with sequel after sequel. And what do you know here comes another. To make matters worse, it seemed as though we were going to be shown the exact same movie as the first with the only exception being that this time around Mac and Kelly Radner (Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne) were to go head to head with a sorority rather than a fraternity. I mean come on! I’ll be honest, even though I was excited for the film, being a fan of the first, Neighbors 2 was one of those movies I went into with a tiny part of me hoping that it would turn out to be repetitive trash giving me some ammunition in my tirade against the sequel driven machine of Hollywood. Well, it wasn’t. Just like most Rogen vehicles I wound up getting swept up in the adolescent charm of this R rated comedy. Don’t get me wrong the film is repetitive. It’s no secret that it has reused many story beats from the first but, then again, with this type of lowerbrow fare it’s more than enough (at least this time) to spend a little more time with these characters and revel in their hijinks. After all who wants to watch 90 minutes of the Radners picking out daycares and mowing their lawn in peace. Nobody. We want them mixing it up with some young troublemakers.

The film kicks off back in the Radner home where we learn that Kelly is pregnant with the couples’ second child. Now needing to upsize, the Radners decide to sell their home for a bigger one in a different neighborhood. Using Wendy (Liz Cackowski), the same problematic realtor from the first film, they accomplish this feat smoothly. But wait there’s a clause. After selling the house the transaction goes into escrow, a thirty-day period where the buying party can perform as many different types of inspections as they wish and if at any point become dissatisfied can cancel the purchase. This is a problem because the Radners have simultaneously bough into their new home which inconveniently does not have an escrow period, meaning that if worse comes to worse they will be stuck with two houses, which they can’t afford.

We catch up with former antagonist and old

Delta Psi Beta leader Teddy, played by the returning Zac Efron, at a poker game with several fellow fraternity brothers. As they each go on to discuss the success’ they’ve all had since college Teddy, still working a retail job, realizes the lack of progress he’s made since his school days and even worse that he no longer fits in with his friends. The situation is exacerbated when fellow Delta Psi Beta alum and roommate Pete (Dave Franco) gets engaged (to another man giving a comical spin to the character that caused so much trouble in the first film for sleeping with Teddy’s girlfriend) and informs Teddy that he must move out of the house. Now a broken man, Teddy leaves but does manage to find solace in a group of freshmen girls lead by the young Shelby (Chloë Grace Moretz). Unimpressed with the current campus sorority’s inability to host their own parties and disgusted with the rampant sexism they encounter at frat parties and in their dorms, the girls decide to start their own sorority, Kappa Nu, with the intention of hosting female friendly events. Jumping on the chance to return to his glory days, Teddy begins to mentor the girls on how to run a sorority. The only problem is that the house Kappa Nu happens to rent is the same one that housed Delta Psi Beta, which neighbors the Radners’ home. Scared that the sorority’s raucous parties will scare away their house’s buyers, the Radners are forced once again into a turf war with the neighbors, trying desperately to shut Kappa Nu down.

The film does a good job at taking the time to properly and organically (not hastily) reacquaint the audience with the returning characters and introduce and let them familiarize themselves with the new ones. The switch from a fraternity to a sorority sets up the plot’s moral thread of women fighting for their rights as well as some comedic contradictions between men and women. For instance, in a humorous montage sequence that establishes the Radner’s irritation with the newly settled Kappa Nu, the film cuts back and forth between shots of Mac and Kelly frustratingly being kept up at night and various girl centric events going on in the adjacent house such as a virginity party where Shelby is hoisted around a packed room on a chair bat mitzvah style for keeping her virginity. This would never go on in a frat house. Fans of Rogen’s raunchy style comedy will certainly not be let down, I definitely wasn’t, as it features his signature risqué dialogue throughout and a plethora of hilarious gross-out moments from the Radner house being littered with used tampons to Mac finding out Kelly is pregnant when she vomits on him during sex.

The relationship between the Radners and Kappa Nu leader Shelby, however, is not as well fleshed out in comparison to that of Teddy and the couple from the first. The main reason for this is that Moretz, Rogen and Byrne don’t seem to share enough screen time together and consequently their spy-vs-spy-esk battle of wits is not as personal as the original, carrying less emotional weight. However, the chemistry between Efron, Rogen and Byrne is cashed in on once again when the girls of Kappa Nu eventually give Teddy the boot forcing him to join the “old people”, whom he realizes to be his true peers, and help them attempt to dismantle the sorority out of revenge.

The film manages to muster a type of moral center, culminating with its climax that criticizes the type of chauvinistic male parties of the first, without ever becoming too heavy. Several great standout comedic moments are peppered throughout the film, such as one, involving a hilarious chase sequence through the masses attending a tailgating event and another that cleverly pays homage to the air bag gag of the first film. You know the scene I’m talking about. In the end the real question you need to ask yourself is this. Did I enjoy the first one? If yes, you’re likely a Seth Rogen fan and bound to have a few good chuckles with this outing.

Universal Pictures Canada releases Neighbours 2: Sorority Rising on Friday, May 20, 2016