The Neighbors is a good film inasmuch as it is entertaining, funny, well shot, has good music, and offers an at least partially fresh take on the Old School genre. There’s some legitimately funny stuff in here. But I still hated a pretty major aspect of it.
You know how some many seemingly all new parents these days instantly become self-righteous baby-centric goons peppering social media with Baby Baby Baby and creating agonizing faux-satirical feel-good videos about how cool it is to be a dad or wearing Christmas Jammies or apologizing (but not really) for never seeing their friends ever again because their new life is just so perfect and important? This is wretched shameful behavior. As a babyless, loveless, forlorn wanderer in this barren land, I don’t need to be told day in and day out how complete new parents suddenly feel and how I really won’t know the meaning of life until I generate an infant too. I just want to watch my movies in peace.
And this film didn’t let me do that, because it trumpets this same self-righteous message. Rogen even has a heartfelt monologue (how being with alone with his wife and daughter “is the only party I want to be at”) — it’s a maudlin sapfest that doesn’t belong here.
If you’re capable of looking past this daddy-boosting sentiment, by all means see this movie — Zac Efron and Dave Franco are great. And if you’re a self-obsessed new parent hoping for yet another feel-good video validating your life choices and telling you how special you have it, well, go see this movie. Or log onto Facebook. Same thing.
Haus Verdict: Hilarious at times, but commits the cardinal sin of trying to convince decidedly uncool new parents that they are, in fact, cool. And really, they do enough of that themselves.