Review Roundup: Zac Efron, Seth Rogan Battle as THE NEIGHBORS

By: May. 09, 2014
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Being compared to such classic frat-house comedies like ANIMAL HOUSE, REVENGE OF THE NERDS, and OLD SCHOOL, THE Neighbors opens up in theaters nationwide on Friday. Seth Rogen, Zac Efron and Rose Byrne lead the cast of Neighbors, a comedy about a young couple suffering from arrested development who are forced to live next to a fraternity house after the birth of their newborn baby.

Let's see what the critics had to say:

A.O. Scott | New York Times

"NEIGHBORS does something a little different. It fuses romantic traditionalism with new-school naughtiness and imagines marriage not as a prison but as a shared playground." Read the full review here.

Betsy Sharkey | Los Angeles Times

"This raunchy unrooting of a settled suburban idyll exposes the considerable angst of emerging adulthood with a kind of scatological fervor designed to elicit oodles of inappropriate laughs. It succeeds. Despite a strain of sweetness and considerable smarts, the film is a bit like ANIMAL HOUSE on steroids - and with penis molds. If crude and lewd offend, beware." Read the full review here.

Claudia Puig | USA Today

"Though it's not for the easily offended, somewhere amid all the vulgarity, the tender bond between Mac and Kelly - especially as they try to find their rightful place on the adult spectrum - adds some surprising depth to this raunchy comedy." Read the full review here.

John DeFore | Hollywood Reporter

"Neighbors represents a more real-world point of view than Animal House and Old School, one that understands frat-boy excess not as a joyous manifestation of Bacchanalian life-force, but as a pointless, retrograde enterprise that should be stomped mercilessly - even if the middle-class banality that quashes it isn't everyone's ideal of adulthood." Read the full review here.

Andrew Barker | Variety

"Lewder, weirder, louder, leaner, meaner and more winningly stupid than anything its director Nicholas Stoller and star Seth Rogen have ever been involved with before, frat comedy Neighbors boasts an almost oppressive volume of outrageous gags, and provided that audiences don't mind the lack of anything resembling a coherent story arc, its commercial potential ought to be enormous." Read the full review here.

Chris Nashawaty | Entertainment Weekly

"It's a frat-house flick with more on its mind than beer, bongs, and beer bongs. It's also a razor-sharp commentary on desperately trying to remain carefree after the burdens of adulthood have taken over." Read the full review here.

Michael Phillips | Chicago Tribune

"One part smart, one part stupid and three parts jokes about body parts, the extremely raunchy Neighbors is a strange success story. It's nobody's idea of a well-structured and logically detailed screenplay, even though its premise - new parents battling frat house Neighbors - springs from a high-concept idea that could've come from scriptwriting software or a research facility." Read the full review here.

Joe Williams | St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"The sharp recurring theme is that Mac and Kelly still yearn for the reckless freedom they shared before Stella was born. While it's bust-a-gut funny to watch Mac enact his version of OLD SCHOOL, his obvious love for his life partner Kelly gives Neighbors a more potent aftertaste than most stoner comedies." Read the full review here.

Did you visit the neighborhood on opening weekend? Add your review to the roundup in the comments below.



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