Bad Neighbours

"Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne's marrieds are exhausted in their new home with their newborn baby and their weariness is exacerbated by their rowdy new fraternity neighbours, led by cocky Zac Efron (who doesn't appear to have a comic bone in his buff body) and Dave Franco (funnier). A war of attrition ensues in another peurile comedy from the absurdly unfunny Rogen."

No, that is not me being snarky, but what one of the quality weekend papers said about this new dvd release. In my previous post on it, when the film opened here a few months ago, I quoted from the Sunday Times critic, a lady who does not mince her words - to recap: "BAD NEIGHBOURS is such an appallingly moronic comedy that will make anyone with a working pair of ears and eyes never want to see a film again. Rogen plays exactly the same character he’s ever played: a stupid, lubricious, fat loser paired with a woman who wouldn’t look at him twice in real life (because of course all schlubby guys in these kind of movies deserve hot girls) … this is a horrifyingly dumb mess that makes ANIMAL HOUSE look like Antonioni."

Well I would not have put it like that, but maybe we just don't get frat boy humour here in the UK, and of course this kind of movie is not made for my generation, but one has to feel sorry for today's kids if they really think this is funny. Zac was fine in THE PAPERBOY but is on autopilot here, and I saw Seth recently in THE GUILT TRIP, because it was a Streisand film, and the disk was a gift from a pal, who saw it and did not need to keep it. (See Seth, Zac labels for reviews).

I had actually been looking forward to this, but I barely laughed once - the De Niro party was a good idea but nothing was made of it, and its a grim plod towards the ending where Zac now works shirtless for Abercrombie, and Seth goes topless too. Rose Byrne comes off  best here - though she also gets her own gross-out moment. Perhaps she needs more quality control over her scripts though ... Lisa Kudrow amused too as the Dean. The IMDb comments on the film make some funny reading ... but you will forget it all immediately after seeing it.