You Simply Don't Want This Sorority House for Your Neighbors

Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising: Rated “R“ (1 h. 31 min.)

Starring: Rose Byrne, Chloë Grace Moretz, Zac Efron, Seth Rogen, Dave Franco

Directed by: Nicholas Stoller

So, back in 2014 Kelly and Mac Radner (Byrne, and Rogen) had the misfortune to deal with some very nosy and disruptive neighbors who, as college frat-boy, party animals, proved to be well, loud, boisterous, and not the kind of neighbors you really want especially with a new baby. Well, as it turns out, Kelly and Mac won out and managed to get the frat house evicted. Only now, it is a couple of years later, and now, with another child on the way, Mac and Kelly believe themselves to be ready to make their final move into actual adulthood. However, just as they feel safe in the thought that they have reclaimed the neighborhood, they discover that their new neighbors (a sorority of freshman this time around) are even more out of control than the boys.

As it turns out the Radners are movin’ on up to a nicer house in a much better neighborhood. You see, they’ve sold their place and are on the hook for a new place, only they are in escrow for the next 30 days while the new owners get to vet the neighborhood. The problem is, that the girls occupying the house next door, are even more ribald party animals than their predecessors. So now, in order to evict them, they will need help from their former neighbor, Teddy (Zac Efron) to turn the table on these rambunctious girls and make the jump to their better life.

Like many of Rogen’s films this one is over-the-top scatologically raw and simply too much fun to miss (if you like this sort of thing, which we actually, sort of do). As it turns out the girls who moved in next door — Shelby, Jimmy and Beth (Chloë Grace Moretz, Ike Barinholtz, Kiersey Clemons) are, hilariously, world-class millennial morons. They are such entitled, elitist, no-nothings that it hurts. Moretz and her cohorts play these girls any dumber if they tried. At first they are so clueless that they need Teddy’s help to subsides and fund the basic costs of running an off-campus sorority house. As it turns out, the reason that Teddy helps the girls is that even though he is smarter than the girls, he is still dumber than a bag of rocks, and thus he really is pretty unqualified to do much of anything.

What makes the film work, is that leavened throughout the film silly foolishness, is a very strong and positive message of girl-power, cohesiveness, and solidarity amongst friends. At the core of their rebellion, the girls are fighting against a world that seems to be stacked against them with regulations that seem to favor men, the older generation, and the establishment, so, at least on some level, you want to side with the girls (if only they weren’t so incredible entitled and moronic). Still, the film is more than a pileup of off-color jokes, drug-laced humor, and gags that make us gag (in one of the film’s running jokes, the Radner’s are such bad parents that their daughter’s favorite toy is Kelly’s personal vibrator).

Okay, we admit that the film’s humor probably isn’t for everyone, but we found it, quite honestly, laugh out loud funny, all the way through.