Bad Neighbours

Art & Culture

Most Hollywood comedies have a quota of laughs that sit somewhere between none and not enough. This is at the not enough end, which means that I laughed a few times, then had to wait a while before anything else funny happened. The trouble is that the stuff between the laughs isn't that interesting.

The best thing about the film is the relationship between Mac and Kelly, a young married couple with a baby played by Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne. They have a baby and a nice house, but aren't really feeling ready to grow up, even though parenthood is tying them down more than somewhat. Life takes a turn for the worse when the new neighbours are not the interracial gay couple with baby that they hoped for, but a frat house. For those not familiar with this peculiar phenomenon (unique to America as far as I know), this involves large numbers of young men occupying a house, and partying like it's 1899, 1999 and 2099 all in one.

This is not good news for Kelly and Mac, keen as they are to be down with the kids, and after one visit next door to join in the fun, they resort to calling the cops when the noise gets too loud. Which of course, in the eyes of Head Student Teddy (Zac Efron) and his cronies, means war. Thus we are embarked on a tit-for-tat (and that image will become all too literal in the course of the film) fight to the death, involving grossness, revenge stupidity, and cunning plans that Baldrick might have rejected as idiotic.

In all this Kelly fails to play the sensible wife/mother, and is just as keen as Mac to kick ass, which makes a nice change. Rose Byrne plays her as Australian for no obvious reason, but since she is Australian, she does it plausibly. Rogen makes the transition from Knocked Up reluctant father, to dedicated dad with a couple of love handles, and the two of them make a great team; devoted to each other and the baby, but finding it really hard not to have the lives they were familiar with before their bundle of joy appeared.

As I say, that's the best bit of the film, since the rest is fairly standard bad language, and gags which require condoms, dildos and farts. Billy Wilder it ain't. It'll appeal to an audience, both to those for whom this has become a reality as well as those for whom it is still in the future, but for the older farts among us, it lacks a certain delicacy and wit.

5/10