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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
