Everybody Needs Good Neighbours

Like you, I couldn’t care less whether my neighbours lived or died. Obviously I’m not a psychopath so I’d prefer for them to remain in some state of happy consciousness but in honesty, they have so little impact on my life that I can’t see how their survival is my problem. I’m sure that makes me sound like a dick but if I were you, I’d look more towards the bigger picture to see how capitalism and social networking have pushed us towards a selfish society that’s smothered by a sense of isolation… That and during my youth if I accidentally kicked a ball over the fence then some of them would be cocks about giving it back, so fuck them. On my list of priorities, I’d say that my neighbour's ability to remain alive is somewhere above me remembering to put the bin out this week but definitely below getting around to finally watching The Wire. There’s a family that lives next door to me that I honestly don’t think I’ve seen in months. Maybe by chance we’ve just managed to avoid each other or maybe they’re rotten corpses are lying on the other side of my wall having chocked to death in a ritualistic orgy of drugs and bestiality. Either way they’re keeping the noise down so I’ll leave them to it.   

Taxi Driver 2: Son of a Bickle

Anyway so all of this brings me to the latest film that I saw at the cinema which happens to have been Seth Rogen’s Bad Neighbours. Apparently it’s called Neighbours in other countries but they changed the name here because they worried we’d confuse it with that shit Australian soap of the same name. If that’s true then cheers for having so little faith in our intelligence knobheads! Although having said that and to be fair you’re depressingly probably not wrong. I once heard a kid loudly ask if he was watching Spider-man 2 about an hour into a screening of Fantastic Four 2: Rise of The Silver Surfer so I guess you really can’t underestimate the public's stupidity at times. Not only that but to have heard that simple little brat ask its ridiculous question I guess that must also mean that I’d paid to see Fantastic Four 2 too… so I guess neither of us where wearing our thinking caps that day. Anyway yeah… So I saw Bad Neighbours which basically tells the story of a young family who have their peace shattered when the place next door to them becomes a fraternity house. Despite an initial bonding session things quickly turn sour and the two neighbours end up in a prank war. Well fuck me sideways if that’s not a set-up for a comedy then I don’t know what is!

I’d like to say at this point that I love seeing films that are new to me and so even if I didn’t particularly like something that’s not to say I can’t appreciate the experience of having seen it. With that in mind it brings me no pleasure to have to report that in my humble opinion Bad Neighbours was a little bit shit. I mean it’s not awful and is nowhere near as bad as the Jack and Jill style of comedic diarrhoea that Adam Sandler has been pumping out for the majority of his career. But I’m a fan of Seth Rogen and compared to some of his films like SuperBad and Pineapple Express for me this really doesn’t compete. I think there are four main reasons for this which are its lack of heart, the lack of discipline, the lack of surprises and the fact that all the female characters mostly have to do is have nice tits. Although to be fair with the exception of those that have milk shooting out of them or a baby clamped on the women did have some nice tits.

So to start with the lack of discipline I think this comes down to the script and how there doesn’t seem to fucking be one. Rogen’s comedies often have an improvised feel to them which is fine but that still requires something more technical than sticking people together getting them to chat shit and then hoping for the best. There are conversations here in which the bollocks spews from characters mouths and although it teases the potential of humour it generally ends up going on for way too long. The cast of This is Spinal Tap tend to improvise their comedies but you can still tell that the material has been trailed and scrutinised beforehand. The Office too feels improvised although according to interviews I hear that the naturalistic dialogue and performances were simply the result of Gervais and Merchants really well written scripts. My point is that I’m not simply bitching that Bad Neighbours doesn’t sound like it was written by the bastard off-spring of Shane Black and Oscar Wilde but rather that it simply could have done with a little more self-control.

As for the lack of heart… well this ironically might have helped me get over that previous issue. As I mentioned before I do really like Super Bad and Pineapple Express however they clearly also place the same level of importance on their scripts as Mel Gibson does on not being a mental racist. Despite their obvious indulgences though the one thing that they have to hook me in is likeable characters and slightly touching relationships. Whether it be Jonah Hill and Michael Cera or Seth Rogen and James Franco, I’m kind of a sucker for films that depict the sweetness of two friends strengthening their bond. I think films about male friendship are to me what rom-coms are to lonely women who spend their nights crying fat tears of regret into a tasty tub of ice-cream. In Bad Neighbours however there are I suppose three main relationships… there’s the one between Rogen and his wife Rose Byrne, Rogen and his neighbour Zac Efron and another between Efron and mate Dave Franco. Out of all of those though the only one that comes close to being either interesting or memorable is the one between Rogen and Efron as the film hints towards a kind of big brother/little brother thing between the two. In fact for me the highlight of the movie was their drunken bonding session in which they ate magic mushrooms, got wankered, argued about who made the best Batman and then had a swordfight with their piss. Sadly though this only lasts like one scene before the two are pitted against each other and the film descends into dull, slapstick bollocks.

Rogen is a family man whose jealous of Efrons freedom and Efron is a dick because he’s worried about his future. If there’s one thing I like more than male bonding it’s a film in which the message seems to be that no matter who or how old you are life will always be shite. Both this idea and their relationship are in my opinion two really great starting points for a film. However like I say the slapstick takes precedence over this which would be fine if it wasn’t for one thing… They fucking ruined it for us before we even started watching the fucking movie. Yes I like films about both relationships and nihilism but as Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin have proven there’s still an art to getting a laugh from having somebody get accidentally twat in the head. However the one thing that this therefore requires is the element of surprise. If I’m going to be honest this probably isn’t the kind of film I’d go out of my way to see but I’d seen basically everything out right now and me and my friends needed something to do for the day. My point is that before seeing this film I had about as much interest in Bad Neighbours as the film had for using it’s script for anything more than a shitrag.

However because I’d seen so many other films recently I’d been forced to see the trailer for this film so many times that I already knew most of the fucking jokes. Did I laugh at the stuff with the airbags or the baby eating a condom? Well yeah… I tittered about a month ago when I saw it out of context in the trailer but not now. If I was seeing it fresh then I’m sure the panic in a parents face as they spot their offspring cheerfully chowing down on what looks like a rubber jizz bag would be hilarious. So I guess my advice would be that if the plot is going to waffle and the dialogue is indulgently long then don’t stick all the fucking slapstick jokes in the trailer as that’s literally all there is left to enjoy. It’s like a porn film trying to sell itself by sticking all of the nudity in the trailer when the rest of the film consists of a fully clothed woman chatting to some bloke about the broken boiler. Sorry love but I’ve already seen your flange and I spaffed about two minutes ago. To conclude… if you’ve seen this films trailer then you’ve seen this film.

Today's spot the difference competition! Write in when you find them all!

Anyway like I said Bad Neighbours is a bit shit but it's not awful however I still kind of felt like I needed a quick reminder of why I like Seth Rogen. I'm pretty sure that there's one film in his entire back catalogue that has a great script and yet still feels naturalistic and even features male bonding. For anybody that felt the same amount of disappointment that I did during this film then I really strongly recommend that you go back to his genuinely brilliant cancer comedy 50/50. Admittedly that film also suffers from a lack of meaningful female characters but I guess misogyny must just be part of their style. In 50/50 the main characters girlfriend does nothing but act like a bitch and yet here too Rogen's wife and ironically his young daughter constantly find themselves getting lost amongst the chaos. In fact there's one scene in this film in which the young couple break up for no real reason with the event being about as emotional as having a drunken piss against a bus stop. Not only that but they only stay split up for about a second before they randomly get back together and it's as though nothing ever happened. That's probably the main problem with Bad Neighbours really it's just a bunch of stuff that happens to tie together a bunch of predictable, slapstick moments and then it's over. To be fair though... You could say the same about life. Bye, bye. 

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The C Word

Right before my Granddad died of cancer he gave me some very memorable advice. We were trying to decide what I should do for a living when he remembered that I enjoy drinking tea. This reminded him about a swarm of bees that somehow manage to make tea by simply flying honey up and down a hill. Before I had chance to question this, he then informed me that perhaps I should seriously consider doing that as a career. Now unless he was suggesting that I should start a job that had the pre-requisit of me being a bee, then I haven't got a fucking clue what he was talking about. I can't say for sure but I'm going to assume that he'd had a few too many pain killers that day. Having said that, he did at one point also say he was going to stop using his morphine so that he could instead sell it to some drug dealers. I guess there's a chance that, cancer aside, he may have just been a little bit mental. 

Stick to 'Nanu-nanu', Robin.

Released in 2011, 50/50 is a comedy that centres  around the story of a young cancer victim and despite its tragic subject, actually manages to be quite funny. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Adam, a twenty-seven year old who is enjoying a healthy lifestyle when he discovers a tumour attached to his spine. Before seeing this, I didn't even know that you could get cancer there so I'm glad I now have something else to worry about. Occasionally I'll check my balls for lumps but not very often and not without getting instantly distracted by just violently wanking. Considering that the last big comedy that dealt with illness was Patch Adams, I'm sure we're all a little apprehensive about returning to the subject. If I was ever in hospital and Robin Williams walked in dressed as a clown, I'd discharge myself immediately and plonk my head straight into an oven. If Patch Adams was attempting to find something that was less funny than dying of cancer then I suppose it can consider itself a success. Actually thinking about it, there was also Funny People, but considering that every-bodies forgotten about it and I haven't seen it, fuck it- let's just pretend it never happened.

Those aren't real bruises, lest we forget.

So regarding this story, the structure of 50/50 is interestingly very similar to that of your classic underdog movie. It's about somebody reluctantly being forced to battle against the odds with the film heading towards an inevitable and final confrontation. I obviously won't ruin the end but just because it's about an underdog, don't be under the impression that there'll definitely be a happy and feel-good conclusion. As shite as Rocky is, it's also your classic underdog film but even there Stallone's boxing, mumbler-frump was beaten by Apollo Creed. With formulaically placed emotional peaks and troughs, the narrative of  both the Rocky films and 50/50 are pretty much identical to each other. Having said that, Rocky did then go on to beat Clubber Lang's tacky bulk of bling in Rocky 3 so I guess there's always hope. Basically the point that I'm trying to make is that whether Adam lives or dies is completely dependant on whether his cancer is the tumour equivalent of either Carl Weathers or Mr T.   

 

... Simplicity incarnate.

Not that I'm saying an uncomplicated narrative is a problem by the way. Paris Hilton has made millions of dollars which, with her questionable intelligence, proves that being hugely simple sometimes has its advantages. By following a relatively straightforward tangent, the film instead focuses on Adam as a character as well as the friends and loved ones that orbit his life. It goes without saying that the performances are all great with Joseph Gordon-Levitt here continuously proving his talent and likeability. Sure he started off his career as a child actor, but since Mysterious Skin had him arse fucked and beaten by a big gay trucker, he's done everything he can to earn credibility. When not shining in knock-out indie films like Brick and Hesher, he also manages to do action movies like Looper during which he delivered the best Bruce Willis performance since Unbreakable.

After Adam receives the news of his illness, he's told that his body will go into survival mode. In actual fact, coincidentally, my body does that every time I go camping at a music festival. For me however, this means that I don't need as much food or sleep and thankfully feel no urge to shit. For Adam on the other hand, it apparently means going through shock, and a haunting sense of calm and numbness. So it's kind of like how I feel everytime I spaff. This also of course allows JGL to show off his emotional range as he convincingly proves how little fun having cancer must be. Adam spends the duration of the movie repressing his feelings and bottling them up in an attempt to stay strong. If I was him, I think I'd probably just have a full-blown breakdown by spending the film marching naked through the streets and chunnering loudly about God.

To help Adam remain positive however, there is his best friend, mother, therapist and girlfriend. His best friend is played by Seth Rogan, with their bromantic relationship being one of the film’s key highlights. Rogan himself here brilliantly shows off his range by doing the usual trick of making jokes and getting stoned. Luckily, that happens to be a trick that I find quite enjoyable, relatable and aspirational. It should also be noted though that for a change, Rogan actually has a little more depth than usual which isn't surprising considering that he's kind of reliving his real life past. 50/50 was written by Will Reiser who is not only a friend of Rogan's but actually suffered from cancer a few years ago. That's not to say this film is autobiographical however, with it instead just taking inspiration from the writers experiences. Kind of like what Nil By Mouth is to Gary Oldman and the Jew hating Borat is to Mel Gibson. Also it obviously goes without saying that Reiser thankfully survived as nobody has made a film whilst dead since Steven Seagal's fat bloated corpse last appeared on screen.

If there's been any criticism of 50/50, it's in its depiction of the female characters. From reading reviews it seems that some critics have found the writing of Adams Mum and Girlfriend slightly misogynistic. I'm not sure why, but I'd guess this is probably mostly due to how ball achingly irritating they can occasionally be. Luckily though for me at least that just wasn't the case, although I can see why people might have that view. His mother does at times appear to be a bit of a bitch and her attempts to care for Adam are at times a little too smothering. However she's clearly acting out of love and a sense of helplessness having found out that her son could be about to pop his clogs. Also, in reality, since when are parental figures not massively annoying anyway? A few years ago my Mum got drunk, starting arguing and genuinely warned me that the Queen could be planning my assassination. Having said all that, it does probably help that I'm a massive fan of Wes Anderson and so will love any film in which Anjelica Huston appears as the Mum. And that's even if she does decide to turn up whilst dressed like a randomly tranny-fied Rod Stewart.

As for Adam's girlfriend, I genuinely can't see how people don't sympathise with her. She's a woman who unwillingly stays in a relationship because she'd feel too guilty to leave it. Sure she makes mistakes but it's not like she's having a good time. As unfairly disliked girlfriends go, it's worth noting that Bryce Dallas Howard does a good job in a role that film critic Mark Kermode considered to be “thankless”. To be honest, I'm just always a little creeped out whenever I see Bryce Dallas Howard. It's nothing against her, I just don't like finding myself attracted to something that originated life in Ron Howard's balls.

Considering that there's only one character left, it would seem unfair not to mention Anna Kendrick's performance. She plays Adams warm but inexperienced therapist who kindly tries to help, despite his obvious cynicism. To be honest I'm not sure why he's so resistant towards her because I'd fucking love a trip to the psychiatrist. Getting my issues sorted professionally would certainly seem more productive than writing this shit on a weekly basis. Plus Anna Kendrick's timid vulnerability is just so endearing that I don't know who wouldn't want to spend time with her. Having said that, her teeth are so ridiculously white that they must be radioactive. As much as I'd enjoy her company, every time she smiles, my retinas start to scream as though I'm staring at the sun through a telescope. Having seen her in a few things I would say this is possibly her best performance although she was also pretty good in Up in the Air. In that I particularly enjoyed the scene in which George Clooney slagged of marriage so much that he made her cry. Batnipples aside, he can be a proper hero at times.

Hero.

I actually first saw 50/50 at the cinema where somehow, it just felt a little out of place. It's not that it's in anyway like a TV movie, but for some reason it just suits being watched on DVD whilst surrounded by home comforts. Thinking about it though, listening to some plebs nonchalantly grazing on popcorn whilst witnessing a man’s slow deterioration could also be one of the reasons. I know I've kind of banged on about the characters here but I think that's really where the joy of this film is. As great as everything else might be, the guaranteed replay value will be just so that you can spend time with those people again. It's one of those movies in which you wish you were part of the gang and everyone’s mate, kind of like Stand By Me, Superbad and Get Carter. That last example is probably just for me.

In the end, I don't know how the fuck people cope with the stress of cancer and I don't look forward to finding out. With all that in mind, I strongly suggest people instead donate the price of this movie to cancer research and just take my word that it's a good film. Considering how many people die of it, I've always been under the assumption that it's what will kill me too and I'd like you all to save me. They say that every little helps so if everybody who reads this blog gives just ten pence then who knows, by the end of the week we might be almost up to a quid. 

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Follow this blog or I'll fucking cut you.

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