Neighbors is a Seth Rogen comedy, which means he doesn’t stop talking, his character’s sexuality is in a gray zone, and he shows his chest — one of the things on display in James Franco’s most recent artwork. Rogen plays Mac Radner, a young father who lives with his wife, Kelly (Rose Byrne), in a nice leafy suburb. The house next door is for sale, and Mac and Kelly get very excited about the potential for progressive exoticism when they see a gay couple with a baby inspecting the premises. But fate has a different kind of exoticism planned for them. Before they know it, a truck full of students pulls up in front of the house: It is now the Delta Psi Beta fraternity, and the Radners should expect to get little to no sleep for the foreseeable future.
They try to play it cool, going over to make friends with the enemy, as it were, by offering them some choice weed and attending their first party, but soon they realize they are not in college anymore, so they call the police and have the party shut down. And that is the shot heard round the neighborhood: The school children, and especially the leader of the pack, Teddy (Zac Efron), see this act as a declaration of war, and they are all too willing to fire back.
Teddy, whom Mac describes, in a moment straight out of a Franco-Rogen bromance, as looking “like something a gay guy designed in a laboratory” (he is not a bad-looking man), is the big honcho and wants to get into the fraternity’s hall of fame by throwing some of the best parties in its long but not exactly illustrious history. For him, whatever lies ahead is beyond the fog of the present, and there are points in the film where we sort of do a double-take when we realize how stupid he really is. But apparently, it’s possible to graduate from the U.S. college system even if you don’t have a basic grasp of general knowledge.
His compadre is the much more level-headed Pete (James Franco’s brother, Dave), perhaps the most interesting character in the fraternity because he is entirely immersed in the customs and the history of the band of brothers while also being acutely aware that this bubble is only temporary.
The two also have some excellent banter between them, with many a quotable line you are likely to hear repeated again and again over the summer. The Radners, on the other hand, form a strange duo, and it is difficult for us to take their concerns about their child seriously when the baby apparently spends most of the film on its own, alone at home, while the parents go off to perform childish revenge tricks. They are clearly bored with their suburban life, but even as they try to be responsible, they can’t help but yearn to relive their own college years.
The other point that needs to be addressed is the use of the word "nigger." Neighbors is sure to ruffle a few feathers when one of its characters (played by Ike Barinholtz), a doofus who frequently embarrasses himself while running his mouth, uses that particular pejorative term twice, including once as an imitation of President Obama. The actor pulls it off, barely, because the context sometimes makes it clear he shouldn’t have used the word, but the broader question is whether the film could have done without it, and whether its use seems unnecessary and provocative, the answer is an unequivocal ‘yes.’ If Rogen is in a film, we are bound to see penises in some form or another, and if that is what you are expecting, Neighbors won’t disappoint you. For those viewers looking for breasts exploding with milk, they will find such things here, too.
One of the truly odd bits of plot, however, is that the rest of the neighborhood seems to wholly ignore the raucous late-night parties. In the first act, we see the boys flirting and cajoling their way into the hearts of their other neighbors, but surely these people also have to sleep? For the most part, we just get to see Efron’s young abs as a pointed counter to Rogen’s slightly older but much saggier chest area. The frat boys and the young parents try to outdo each other with childish antics, and we are left vaguely entertained, but if we had to pick this out of a lineup of similar films aimed squarely at young adults, it would be a challenge. In most markets outside the United States, this film is titled Bad Neighbours.