Neighbors Review

Nicholas Stoller finds the one thing that makes this premise more than a sequence of gags, which is that both sides are frightened. The couple are terrified of having become boring, the fraternity president is terrified of graduating into nothing, and the film takes that symmetry seriously enough to give the ending some weight. Zac Efron is the discovery, playing Teddy with a beautiful self awareness about being a body with an expiration date, and critics single him out repeatedly.

Rose Byrne supplies the other surprise, a wife written as an equal instigator rather than the scold the genre defaults to, and she is very funny. The limits are obvious. The escalation structure runs out of invention around the airbags, the second half repeats itself, and the plot is a delivery mechanism rather than a story. The look is anonymous studio comedy. Several reviewers note that the funniest material is improvised riffing with nothing to do with the war being waged. It is a broad film with two performances better than it needs and one real idea underneath, which is why it holds up better than its competition.