REVIEW: Neighbors (2014) – The Day Nobody Laughed

Runtime: 90 Mins
Rated: R
What To Expect: Dick jokes, fart jokes… uh, dick jokes?

Who wrote this garbage?  Because whoever you are, sir, you might want to think about finding another line of work.  This is so many light years behind warring neighbor movies that are actually funny, like The Burbs (1989), its jokes are so fucking shit and labored, that you gotta wonder how talentless people get talentless shit greenlit for a movie.  A lot of fuss has been made over the fact the this movie is Rated-R, but don’t buy into that.  The only reason it’s Rated-R is because whoever wrote it reverts to one dick joke for every overwrought ten minutes of failed humor in an attempt to shock us into laughing.  Add to that a cast of annoying pricks, both antagonist and protagonist, trying too hard?  The end result – waste of money.

In 90 minutes from me this movie elicited not one laugh, not one smile, and the longer it went on, the more I resented it.  That’s the thing with comedies, you gotta get at least one good laugh in early.  Sort of like a statement of intent.  10 minutes, 20 minutes, right up to the credits… nothing.  Instead, the movie tries to substitute actual comedy with yelling and bro-fisting.  In the movie, a young couple and their baby daughter move into an idyllic neighbourhood, the premise being that this will ultimately be soiled by rowdy cretins moving in next door.  But actually you don’t have to wait for the cretins to arrive – the couple themselves are the first annoying fucks on the screen.  Screaming obnoxious toilet humor from both of ’em, without the actual humor.

So by the time the antagonists arrive, we’ve already had enough of the protagonists.  Their roles and performances totally reek of effort and that’s a bad thing in comedy.  It’s not like 21 Jump Street, where the two leads were boisterous yet naturally funny.  These two are boisterous and trying too hard, probably because they know the movie sucks.

In a good warring neighbours movie there has to be inventive feuding.  Attacks, counter attacks and one upmanship.  In this movie, Seth Rogan talks (screams) about his dick.  Then his neighbours spin their own dick jokes and scream about their pubic hairs.  How the fuck is this funny?  That not witty enough?  How about fart jokes?  An infant handling a condom gag?  No?  It’s not that I’m shitting on it for being offensive, I’m shitting on it for being shit.  That’s where your R-Rating comes in by the way, for once that rating gets abused as a gimmick rather than PG-13.  90 long minutes of really desperate toilet humor.

Even savvy 13 year olds, the apparent target audience, should probably turn their nose up at this.  It’s just not funny.