Movie Review – Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising

Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising depends entirely on every single character making the absolute wrong decision every single time. It’s exhausting how low it would go to scrape a laugh from the bottom of the humor barrel. I haven’t watched a movie in a long time that made me feel bad for the characters because I feared for how they might actually survive in the real world. I take small comfort in that were this reality-based, everyone would be in jail due because to the alcohol-fueled parties no one else in the movie complains about and the piles the weed burning on the backyard grill.
Mac (Seth Rogan, Steve Jobs (2015)) and Kelly (Rose Byrne, Insidious (2010)) reprise their roles from the first Neighbors (2014), and have a new bundle on the way. They wish to sell their house, though I can’t imagine why, it’s a huge house but whatever. It’s only the beginning in a series of lapses of judgment they’ll face over the next 91 minutes. Because they’re idiots (and they really are) they’ve made arrangements to put the house in escrow and they have to keep the property attractive for the next 30 days so the new buyers don’t back out. It’s a wild misinterpretation of what that process is, but again, as long as you accept right now that everyone in the movie is functionally brain dead, please try to keep your heavy sighs to yourself.
Meanwhile, three dim-witted freshmen (Chloë Grace Moretz, Carrie (2013); Kiersey Clemons, Extant (TV), and Beanie Feldstein, Madison High (TV)) manage to move into the empty house next door, clearly negotiating a deal they can’t afford with a landlord who’s also an idiot. They want to start their own sorority (hence the title Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising). They aren’t allowed to be like the boys and have parties like in established fraternities on campus – with the underage drinking, underage sex, drugs – you know, the multiple felonies that get Greek organizations kicked off campus and their members jailed every year since forever. This to them is what college is all about – spreading your wings, and not being like the boys by being exactly like the boys. They’ll need to host lots of loud parties to raise rent money and this proves problematic for Mac and Kelly who want to promote a peaceful neighborhood.
The link between the two houses on the verge of war is a former Delta Psi Beta frat brah (Zac Efron, High School Musical) who finds himself suddenly homeless. He agrees to help the girls empower themselves by telling them what to do and making the “old people” suffer – the same “old people” that got him into trouble last time, because he didn’t learn his lesson from the first film.
Each side of this moronic slap fight makes stupid mistake after stupid mistake, violating occupancy standards, noise ordinances, and because it’s white people being stupid, no one manages to alert actual authorities – and when they do, they’re pretty incompetent (haha, people with guns abusing power but only selectively, haha). The movie never bothers to come back down to any real sense of reality because why, right? There is even a scene where one of the pranks results in someone ending up in Australia – like, on the continent without their partner knowing they’ve even left the country, proving again that the house was already so big one didn’t see the other packing for a trip to Australia. I guess if you’re going to be stupid, you’re not gonna wanna half-ass it.
I like escapist fantasies as much as the next person, but this was over the top. Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising tries to poke fun at unprepared parents (we like sex but can’t remember how babies are made), Greek Life sexism (why can’t we be like the boys and drink ourselves into jail), and the cluelessness of anyone entering adulthood in the next five years (I won’t even bother with these examples).
In case you’re an escaped character from this movie and it’s not entirely clear, I didn’t like Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising. The parts that were funny were more surprising and forced a laugh, and the parts that should have been really funny were just stupid. I rather like my comedies smart without the pandering jokes requiring you to be a wee bit disgusted before you laugh, call it a personality quirk. I was more horrified than humored. However if you’re 15 and like jokes about sex, bad parenting, and a bedazzled vibrator, you should be in line with your legal guardian when this movie opens.
You may have that line to yourself, so be sure to load your phone up with videos of babies falling down, skate punks damaging their penises on hand rails, and the elderly losing their teeth while blowing out birthday candles.
You’ll need to warm up before the movie starts so you don’t injure yourself.
Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising is rated R because of the dramatic drop in IQ points.