BAD NEIGHBOURS
US, 2014, minutes, Colour.
Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne, Zac Efron, Dave Franco, Christopher Mintze- Plasse, Lisa Kudrow.
Directed by Nicholas Stoller.
This is a raucous, very raucous, and coarse comedy, contemporary American style.
It is one of those films which highlights differences in sensibilities in different audiences, especially with the difference of age. This kind of thing happened in the 1990s with Quentin Tarantino and his portrayal of violence in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, where older audiences, prone to take the violence more literally, were upset and horrified whereas the younger generation found the pulpy and satiric tone of the violence funny and could accept it. And we got a word for this sensibility and style: Tarantonoesque.
And this kind of sensibility has been evident in the different responses to Bad Neighbours. Many older audiences have found the comedy too coarse, a kind of very low tone, raucous, a preoccupation with bodily functions and crass sexuality. Unfunny. On the other hand, younger audiences who have been brought up with fewer inhibitions about language, sexuality, and these being the subject of jokes, have been able to take this style of humour and have found the film even clever comedy incorporating this sensibility.
Nicholas Stoller has made Forgetting Sarah Marshall as well as Get Him to the Greek, both more easily acceptable than this one and, surprisingly, has contributed to the writing of The Muppets and Muppets Most Wanted! Here he combines with Seth Rogen, now well-known for many comedies (again not exactly inhibited). Rose Byrne has appeared in some raucous comedies including Get Him to the Greek and Bridesmaids. And Zac Efron starred in Are We Really Dating? They have a box office appeal for seeing Bad Neighbours.
The plot is fairly straightforward, Rogen and Byrne are a married couple with a baby who move into a neighbourhood thinking that it will be nice and quiet suburban living. How wrong they are. The house next door is taken over as a Frat House and they dread the worst. They need not have dreaded it because they eventually and enthusiastically become involved in this worst. At first, they are cautious, and ask for quiet. Not so. And then the Animal House kind of behaviour begins, gets out of hand – and presented with some drinking, sexual, farcical episodes, especially a phallus mould prank. The IMDb synopsis remarks ‘all hell breaks loose’.
If you can’t beat them, join them. Not exactly the initial philosophy of the couple but, over they go to the neighbouring house and begin to join in and become part and party of the proceedings. Which has some hard effects on baby – who is also brought into the farce.
After all the shenanigans, the couple then have to consider how they can live with the neighbours and themselves – but a lot is resolved when authorities, especially in the form of Lisa Kudrow as the college dean, assert some kind of control – and Zac Efron finds himself on the street, literally, spruiking underwear sales.
Bad Neighbours has been big at the box office. Fortunately it is called Bad Neighbours in Australia, implying that there could be some good neighbours. In the US, it is simply called Neighbours – does this imply that they are all bad!
