Review: Neighbors

by Trevor Kirkendall

★★

Unlike my movie-reviewing counterpart Joe Moss, I was not involved in any type of fraternity during my college years. Sure, I attended an event or two but I wasn’t a member of that particular scene. I know nothing about the inner-workings of a fraternity, but I do know enough people who were members to know their lifestyle is being exaggerated for the sake of some cheap laughs in Nicholas Stoller’s new film “Neighbors.”

Seth Rogen is about as reliable as the come in Hollywood these days. You always know what you’re getting with him and “Neighbors” is nothing different. He’s good at what he does, but he never seems to branch out to anything else. He played himself in last summer’s hilarious movie “This Is the End.” He plays Mac Radner in “Neighbors” but I can’t tell the difference. I do still like him though and would consider myself a fan of his.

In “Neighbors,” Mac and his wife Kelly (Rose Byrne) have just moved into a beautiful new house in what appears to be a quiet neighborhood. They are brand new parents to the very adorable Stella. Mac and Kelly were hard partiers in their day and are looking to settle down and be good parents. But Mac can’t resist a good joint at work with his pal Jimmy (Ike Barinholtz) and Kelly desperately wants to hang out at raves with her friend – and Jimmy’s ex-wife – Paula (Carla Gallo).

Without any warning, the Delta Psi fraternity moves into the house next door. Immediately fearing that the neighborhood is about to become quite a bit louder, Mac and Kelly decided to head over to the house and come off as the hip and cool neighbors. They think that if they come across as “dope,” they’ll be able to convince their partying neighbors to keep it down. They immediately make friends with the fraternity’s president Teddy Sanders (Zac Efron) and vice president Pete Regazolli (Dave Franco).

Things start off pretty well with Mac and Kelly partying with the college kids all night long (great parents, right?). Teddy tells Mac if he has any problems with the noise to let him know personally and he’ll take care of it. He makes Mac promise him that he won’t call the cops if there’s an issue. But Mac calls the cops the next night anyway. This is a declaration of war in Teddy’s eyes. He’s planning to make Mac and Kelly’s life a living hell. But Mac and Kelly are also out to see the Delta Psi house get shut down as well.

The setting of Nicholas Stoller’s new film is something that resonates well enough with any current or former college kid (member of the Greek society or not) to be a modestly entertaining movie, but its own plot gets in the way of being as hilarious as it could have been. With every new Seth Rogen movie, I always go back to one of his first films, “Knocked Up.” That film came out at a time when audiences were still being introduced to Rogen, and his trademark antics were not as well known. Take the opening scene in “This is the End” when the random fan asks him to do the “Seth Rogen laugh.” Everyone knows that now.

But not only did that movie introduce the masses to Rogen, “Knocked Up” was also one of the best

comedy films made during the last decade. Judd Apatow proved to moviegoers that just because it’s an R-rated comedy film filled with hundreds of expletives and raunchy sex jokes, the movie could still have an enormous heart. Occasionally, you’ll get another movie that comes close to that (“Superbad,” “This Is the End”). So is it wrong of me to expect a raunchy sex comedy to actually be a good movie in addition to be entertaining, especially when Rogen seems to be in many of the good ones?

The problem with “Neighbors” is that it gets so lost in its own plot it almost forgets to push its theme across. My three-paragraph description of the plot above takes up about 25 or 30 minutes of screen time, which is also known as the first act. There’s still two acts and over an hour of movie left to go. At only 97 minutes, you’d think the film was already short enough, but it feels like it runs long.

The movie is filled with Rogen going after Efron, and then Efron going after Rogen, and back and forth. It’s a classic example of a comedic revenge story. One comment I saw online said that “Neighbors” was Dennis and Mr. Wilson all grown up. I couldn’t agree more. And what’s worse, the things these guys do to each other just aren’t funny. Are there moments of humor? Sure there are. Are they moments that leave you gasping for air because you’re laughing so hard? Only one. Just one.

“Neighbors” is filled with one college cliché after another. “Animal House” is still the definitive college film after all these years, and any other movie produced within that genre is an attempt to outdo it. “Neighbors” is a failed attempt. Each scene portrays the stereotype that fraternities nothing but sex crazed, drug addicted, alcoholic party animals. And while that might be the case for some people, those labels aren’t exclusive to fraternity brothers. The film probably could have still portrayed its messages – as vague as they are – without these over exaggerated and overused cliché.

And while “Neighbors” features Rogen doing what Rogen does, the real star of the film is Efron. Admittedly, I have seen very little of Efron’s work up until this point. I am aware of his Disney Channel beginnings and his desire to shed that image. It’s pretty hard to get rid of that image outside of leaking risqué pictures of one’s self to the Internet. Efron has done a lot of independent work to try and show a more grown up side, but this might be his first mainstream adult role.

And he turns out to be the movie’s best moment.  His character has a surprising amount of depth built into it. Efron portrays this role with great ease. This role and movie might very well have spoken to him more than anyone else. He’s a former teen heartthrob trying to move on to the next stage of his life and career, while also working on his own sobriety. This part works for him, and he plays it exceptionally well.

But that’s not enough to save “Neighbors.” It has its moments that make you laugh but its ultimately unsatisfying. I think that if Rogen wants to continue what’s been a very successful career, he should be branching out more to some different kind of comedies that are little further developed. Films littered with clichés will not be very memorable. Which is why this one will quickly fall away from people’s minds and “Animal House” still remains the must see college comedy.

Review: Now You See Me

by Trevor Kirkendall

★★

Caper films are fun. Even when they’re bad. That’s the simplest explanation I can give for my feelings toward “Now You See Me.” It’s always entertaining when you see a complex scheme pulled off in a film and you’re not quite sure how they got away with it. But when the movie strays off its mark and tries to be something its not, that’s when things come undone. Its the same type of thing that plagues many of Hollywood’s films today. It’d be so nice if the studios just spent a little more of their hard earned cash in the story department, but that’s a long winded conversation for another time.

Four street corner magicians – J. Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson), Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher) and Jack Wilder (Dave Franco) – are all rounded up by an unseen and unknown individual as the movie begins. Together, they form magic act dubbed The Four Horsemen.

One year later, they are all very famous magicians performing nightly in Las Vegas thanks the backing of millionaire Arthur Tressler (Michael Caine). One night in front of the their live audience, they bring up a man on stage who assists them in robbing millions in euros from a bank in France. This catches the attention of the FBI. Agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) is assigned to investigate the magicians with the help of a new agent at Interpol, Alma Dray (Mélanie Laurent).

With no evidence to hold them down, the Four Horsemen are released to continue their magical bank-robbing extravaganza. Rhodes, Dray and the rest of the FBI are shadowing them the rest of the way. They’re also being followed by Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman), famous debunker of magic tricks looking to cash in on exposing how the Four Horsemen pull of their seemingly inexplicable tricks.

What starts as a typical caper film quickly collapses when it tries to add too much to an already crowded screenplay. I’m all for layers in a story that makes it more complex and compelling, but its unnecessary when it starts to take away from the substance of the primary plotline.

On its surface, “Now You See Me” is a typical heist film, much in the same vein as something like “Ocean’s Eleven.” The vast difference between the two films is that “Ocean’s” established a plot, established a motive, gathered the characters together and showed them pulling off the heist. “Now You See Me” works the same way, but feels horribly unnatural.

Motive, for example, is established - at the end. By that time, interest and empathy had dwindled away. Not to mention, the film has shifted its primary focus from the Four Horsemen to the FBI and back again at least two or three times. Its hard to connect with a story when the story itself doesn’t know what it wants to be or who its hero should be.

I feel like this film was put together with too much haste, and that the only reason for making it was to gather a wide range of talented actors and actresses. I never knew who I was rooting for watching all of them on the screen at the same time. None of these actors have ever really played a villainous role so its difficult to see any of them in a negative light, particularly when the screenplay is written with humorous dialogue every other line.

No one seems to flex their acting talents to the best of their abilities. At times it almost feels like Mark Zuckerberg is doing magic tricks alongside Woody Boyd. No one brought anything new to the table that we haven’t already seen from other movies or TV shows.

There’s just too much of a disconnection from beginning to end. And just like all caper movies, the ending is the revelation; how did they do it? While any questions that might pop up throughout the movie seem to have an answer, the big reveal is comically head scratching.

But “Now You See Me” isn’t a total waste. As a sucker for heist movies such as this, I did find the majority of this film relatively enjoyable. The heist is pulled off, money is stolen and you’re left there wondering how. They show how its done, and you’re left amazed. And unlike “Ocean’s Eleven” which shows one heist with one big reveal at the end, “Now You See Me” shows three separate heists. Sure they’re using visual effects and CGI to make the tricks seem real, but that’s what magic is anyway. Just a bunch of illusions to make things look like something unexplainable just happened.

The real magic is how such a large group of talented group of actors were all talked in to performing in such a dull and poorly written film. As entertaining as some parts may be, “Now You See Me” is just another example of how Hollywood still likes to put all their flair before their stories.