Screened Out: Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising

[one-star-rating]Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne, Zac Efron, Chloë Grace Moretz, Ike Barinholtz, Dave Franco, Selena Gomez[/one-star-rating]

One of the common types of movie is full of characters much, much, much stupider than the audience.

The thought is that, if the characters onscreen are dismissible, we will pay to laugh at their pains or watch them being ground into pieces – comedies and horror films having this in common. We could call it either the Three Stooges Rule or the ‘80s Horror Film Rule. However, it’s the same ploy that’s informed all that Adam Sandler or Will Ferrell junk, as well as a new spate of scare flicks.

Zero-IQ characters played by Chloë Grace Moretz and others give feminism a bad name.
Zero-IQ characters played by Chloë Grace Moretz and others give feminism a bad name.

In Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, these people are clearly brainless; they’d flunk a Cosmo personality test. Yet, for some reason, the producers of this crap think it’s going to tell us something about sexism and girl power.

That’s just plain insulting.

The plot is frivolous. The movie degrades women and gays and blacks and Jewish people and all the others it would pretend it’s standing up for. The characters are not insightful, interesting, or intelligent at all; to get to know them would be a waste of our time.

Worst of all, this just isn’t funny. Not one bit.

Many of the gags are rehashes from the first, average Neighbors film. This time it’s framed as feminist pap. The lack of laughs is deafening.

Moretz is a college freshman incensed that American sororities cannot party like fraternities. (Yes, that’s an actual rule – the only enlightening thing about the entire movie). She decides to round up some misfit friends and start her own, new sorority. They plan to host girl power soirées like Famous Females parties and nights where they watch weepies like The Fault in Our Stars while they eat junk food and cry.

Direcotr Nicholas Stoller actually found sond funny in the first film, not this one.
Direcotr Nicholas Stoller actually found sond funny in the first film, not this one.

Yeah, that isn’t cliché about females…

These poor, young women somehow rent the famous one-time frat that Efron ran – the house next to Rogen and Byrne. The couple now has a daughter, plus another on the way, so they’re trying to sell their house for a bigger, quieter one in the suburbs. Their current house is on the verge of being sold; it’s in escrow when the girls move next door, throwing the family’s financial future into turmoil.

At the same time man-baby Efron gets kicked out of his own house. He thinks he could help the sorority find its footing. He gets a place to live for his skill at throwing epic parties.

[rating-key]

What emerges is sheer stupidity. Rogen and Byrne don’t call the cops from the get-go though they could. No one questions the lack of zoning laws or the constant, overt use of drugs. People commit even worse crime like it’s commonplace. For having no money, the girls somehow fill the sorority with furniture and elaborate, theme-specific party paraphernalia. Throughout this indeterminable snore, people try things that are patently idiotic, things we’re supposed to find hilarious.

The worst part is that theme. There is a feeble attempt to tie Rogen’s and Byrne’s raising of a daughter to the supposed feminism next door. If any of this had one iota of truth or intelligence, it might work. If there was something complex or surprising to say, that didn’t make it onto screen.

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