Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (2016)

Despite it's best intentions, Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising can't help but feel like a quickly thrown together sequel to follow-up the successful 2014 comedy starring Seth Rogen and Zac Efron. The first film was a fairly funny look at what its like to suddenly realize you are not the cool kids anymore, instead the cantankerous neighbor that calls the cops for noise complaints.

Neighbors 2 fits the bill of repeating the same thing but this time with a sorority next store rather than a fraternity, to shake things up. There are a few beat-for-beat repeats of gags from the first film, but surprisingly, the movie stands alone as its on entity, and even has a different message to spin.

Shelby (Chloë Grace Moretz), a young college freshman, is looking to enter a sorority, but soon discovers that sororities are not allowed to throw parties, it is only fraternities that can do that. So she sets out to a fraternity party to find the whole thing nothing more than a fairly rapey set-up, a cattle call of beautiful women for these bros to have sex with.

So Shelby, along with her two new friends Beth (Kiersey Clemons) and Nora (Beanie Feldstein), set out to start their own sorority and throw their kind of parties. And, naturally, they end up next door to Mac (Rogen) and Kelly (Rose Byrne), who have their home in escrow and don't want the new buyers to be scared away by the unexpected presence of a loud sorority.

So enter a lot of the same shenanigans as last time, as Mac and Kelly try to civilly quiet their neighbors, before resorting to war. Teddy (Zac Efron) returns, first to help the sorority get established, then when he is kicked out to join Mac and Kelly's side of the war. Plenty of funny and unfunny gags ensue.

One refreshing spin is checking in on the bros of the first film, who all have filled into adulthood, save Teddy whose peak was when he ran the fraternity. It's a nice reminder that not everyone stays on top forever, and that those who seemed like jerks can grow to be good people.

And the film seems to be trying to be fairly feminist, as Teddy's character comes to the realization that frat parties are, essentially, cattle calls for bros to have sex with beautiful women, the rape culture they inspire. The film is rated R for nudity, but you won't find female nudity here; instead it is the men who are exploited, particularly Efron in one of the film's better moments when he puts on a Magic Mike-lite show at a tail gate party. And there is a frank, true conversation about how a dad feels when his son has sex vs. his daughter. It doesn't all feel honest, but it feels like the right step.

But the problem with the film is the pacing. Set, more or less, during the 30 days Mac's house is in escrow, the film hurdles through events at a breakneck pace and barely allows anything to develop. For all of Shelby's good intentions with the new sorority, she comes off as a self-entitled brat that I wanted to see lose. She is the antagonist, but at the same time, her anger and reason for doing what she is doing is well-founded. You might argue it's the movie being morally complex, but I say it's the script and the characters being rushed due to the 2-year turnaround for this movie.

Neighbors 2 is a slight sequel with a big message. What it is trying to do is fairly positive, but unfortunately it hangs it all on a rather mediocre film.