Bad Neighbours

It would be very easy for me to overuse a certain adjective in this review, and that adjective can be found in the film's title. Bad Neighbours (or, as it is known in America, Neighbors) will, I fear, perform well at the box office (indeed, it has knocked Spiderman 2 off the top spot in the US). This is both depressing and indicative of a cinema audience that has come to accept bawdy, lowest common denominator humour as the best that Hollywood comedy has to offer.

From a plot perspective, Bad Neighbours is very simple to explain: a couple (played by Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne) with a young child are enjoying suburban life until a college fraternity – led by Zac Efron – move in next door and disrupt their quiet existence. What ensues promises to be (from the trailer, at least) an exciting riot of sex, parties and sparky humour as two lifestyles collide head-on. In reality, however, the film is annoying, boring, under-written, unfunny, crude, narratively-anaemic and disappointing in almost every respect.

Let's begin with the performances. To say that Efron spends half of the film with his shirt off would be unfair, but it is apparent that his casting was largely based on his star power and physical screen presence; his character is certainly not likeable. Rogen plays the standard, shouty and slightly irritating frat boy character seen in many an American comedy and only Rose Byrne adds any sense of comedic subtlety to proceedings.

Despite a cast which is sure to attract audiences, the main issue with the performances is that they are not controlled or moderated by director Nicholas Stoller (Get Him to the Greek, Forgetting Sarah Marshall). The actors certainly seem to be having a whale of a time in front of the camera, but at the expense of comedic tempo. Stoller seems to have just shouted “action!” and let the dialogue run aimlessly without any discipline over the improvisation. As a result, jokes fail to hit their mark time and time again and I was left totally uninterested with the whole thing.

It is not just the lack of control over the comedy, the type of humour in the film presents significant problems. The jokes either centre on sex or bad language and the script's fundamental reliance on these begins to grate after only twenty minutes into the film. There's little true wit, comedic intelligence or engagement with such jokes. As a result, the performances struggle to rise above such a dull approach to laughs and Efron, in particular, feels underused and rather objectified. As for a narrative, well, you'd have to look pretty hard for one which has any sense of logic or which is remotely engaging.

Bad Neighbours is, in a word, bad. Badly-written, badly-directed and badly-constructed. Its style of comedy has the potential to shock and is almost as bad as the film's narrative which meanders all over the place. The end result, I'm afraid, is a boring and inert film – quite the opposite to a college fraternity party. If you still want to watch it, watch the trailer: all the best gags are in there. 

Clapperboard Rating: * *