“Bad Neighbours,” the new comedy starring Seth Rogen and Zac Efron, is not a film for those with a weak stomach with regards to the safety of small children. Throughout the film, the adorable newborn tot of Rogen and Aussie wife Rose Byrne is placed in various positions of danger: she’s left alone in the house while mummy and daddy are out partying next door, is very nearly taken to a rave party, and while playing in the front garden, almost chokes on a discarded condom. All of which sounds like despicably reckless behaviour on the part of mummy and daddy, and yet it’s to the credit of Rogen and Byrne’s performances that we kinda, sorta let them get away with all this: so irresistibly charming are they in their roles, and so utterly believable are they as loving but inexperienced parents, that we can’t help but love them. Besides, the safety of their child is never totally forgotten: when partying, Byrne rather hilariously has a baby monitor pressed against her ear, and upon discovering their offspring has swallowed said contraceptive, they do run to the emergency room, screaming their heads off.
Oh, and the film is very funny, wringing a ton of laughs from its central premise: excited but exhausted new parents Mac and Kelly have their suburban comfort disturbed when a college fraternity sets up camp next door. Leading the fraternity is a perfectly cast Efron, who makes a change of pace from smoldering, topless hero to smackable, topless villain, and pulls off the obnoxious frat-boy role with aplomb. As the fraternity throw wild parties and a sleep-deprived Rogen and Byrne fight back, the film gets a lot of laughs out of the ensuing, quickly escalating neighbourly war — I’d seen the airbag-in-the-office-chair gag in the trailer, saw it coming a mile off and still I cackled. And the script is clever to show both sides of the story: we’re generally supposed to be on the side of Rogen and Byrne, but the script smartly allows us to sympathise with Efron, who’s shown to be a rather tragic figure, scared of the future, as seen in the supposedly old and boring couple next door, and forever stuck in party-hard mode.
The film is Rogen’s first since the all-star apocalyptic comedy “This is the End,” which he wrote and directed with regular collaborator Evan Goldberg (who produces with Rogen while Nicholas Stoller directs). With it, “Bad Neighbours” shares an improvisational style — listening to the dialogue, you get the sense that there was a lot of ad-libbing on-set — and a juvenile sense of humour — did I mention the condom-gobbling toddler? But “Bad Neighbours” is a better film than “This is the End,” free from the latter’s rather off-putting self-indulgence — though undeniably funny, “This is the End” did feel like a great big circle jerk for the Apatow crew. But most of all, it boasts the warm, funny charm between Rogen and Byrne, whom we love as a couple, as parents and as aging teens, even if they are prone to casual drug use and child endangerment.
Rating: 8/10
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