TheRetroCritic

Like kind of a cross between Old School , Project X and Knocked Up ,  Neighbors promised the usual mix of slapstick chaos, gross-out humour, improv-style dialogs and observational married couple humour Judd Apatow pretty much perfected (and overused) about 12 movies ago. Neighbors feels instantly familiar, tired even, and although you keep hoping throughout that it dares to take a darker turn at some point, or any kind of unexpected turn, taking a page out of Pacific Heights rather than every Seth Rogen film ever made, perhaps, it sadly never happens. The plot sees Mac (Rogen) and his wife Kelly (Rose Byrne) clash with a fraternity (run by Zac Efron and Dave Franco) that's moved in right next door. This leads to some bromance and heavy partying followed by a tit-for-tat battle which escalates before predictably imploding. The comedy definitely had potential in that its premise was pretty straight-forward and left a path wide open for tons of jokes and set-ups. Indeed, Neigh

Here's a weird one. After the resounding success of The Blues Brothers , Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi reunited in Neighbors , an odd dark comedy sold as "a comic-nightmare" (and released at Christmas, of all times) which saw the actors kinda switch roles, in a way, with Aykroyd being the loud, ebullient one and Belushi being the restrained, quiet one. The film sees Earl (Belushi) and his wife move into a new house in an abandoned, kinda depressing corner of suburbia while these goofy new neighbours show up to drive Earl completely nuts. The neighbours in question, Vic (Aykroyd) and Ramona (a brilliant Cathy Moriarty) just show up uninvited, the latter coming onto Earl over and over with a Jessica Rabbit-style charm and the former constantly playing tricks on him and pushing his buttons. This is really more of a Tex Avery cartoon than it is a movie and, had they not made it as dark as it is, I'm sure more people would have had fun with it. The rather sombre mood