Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (0/10)

by Tony Medley

Not for children.

Runtime 92 minutes.

Knowing that this was a Seth Rogen movie and having seen the first one, called simply Neighbors (2014), I had low expectations. I knew it would be low class, in poor taste, full of vulgarity, and bursting with f-bombs. Rogen can’t utter a sentence without the F word.

Even so, this was much worse than I anticipated. It is one of the most disgusting, crude pieces of drivel ever committed to the silver screen, and that’s saying a lot, especially since Rogen has been making movies for a while (and don’t forget his buddy-in-vulgarity Judd Apatow is still roaming around Hollywood).

However, this kind of garbage pays. Neighbors grossed over $268 million on a budget of $18 million. This one almost doubled the budget to $35 million. But it’s worse, much worse, than the first one which was simply awful.

It starts with Rogen rutting with his wife, Rose Byrne, on top of him. He is apparently naked but she’s apparently fully clothed. The “joke” is that she gets sick and vomits all over his face. It’s all downhill from there.

The first one had Rogen and his wife living next to a fraternity, run by Zac Efron. In this one, some freshmen girls buy the house and start a sorority run by, guess who? Zac Efron.

The offensive, gross scenes that follow are predictable, especially since Rogen once again gets a writing credit (he doesn’t get all the credit for this, some of the glory goes to director Nicolas Stoller, who was also on the first one). Rogen seems to get a writing credit for every film in which he appears. It reminds me of Al Jolson, who insisted on a writing credit when he had a hit song. Many people in the know, like Irving Caesar, who wrote the lyrics to George Gershwin’s melody for Jolson’s hit “Swanee,” believed that Jolson demanded credit on the songs he sang because it was his performance that made them hits, even though he had no input to the words or melodies. Maybe that’s how Rogen gets writing credit on these movies. But maybe he does contribute to the writing. They are so crass and common, so lacking in style and wit, that I can only believe that he has a lot to do with the final product.

Just as one example of how far below the level of acceptable tastelessness to which this movie descends, there’s one scene in which the sorority girls throw their used feminine hygiene products (Rogen would describe them more specifically) at the windows of Rogen’s house.

I don’t personally know one adult who I think would be able to sit through 92 minutes of this unfunny, despicable raunch.