爱上这篇review
Considering it’s another trouble-in-suburbia comedy of modest proportions, boasting no innovations in form or technique, it may seem odd to say that “Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising” couldn’t — or at least wouldn’t — have been made a mere decade ago. Yet a distinctly current engagement with identity politics colors and complicates Nicholas Stoller’s rampantly rude, rowdy sequel to 2014’s squares-vs.-students farce: With sly sorority girls having replaced lunkheaded fratboys as the collective nemesis of Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne’s harried, hip-no-more homeowners, the film has a knowingly conflicted engagement with millennial-generation feminism that freshens its outlook even as it unevenly rejigs many of its predecessor’s gags. Still, while a subtly clawed Chloë Grace Moretz proves a worthy new foil, it’s Zac Efron’s tragicomic anatomy of a dudebro that remains this series’ sharpest asset.
Though its ribald antics (not to mention Efron’s copious and formidable shirtlessness) drew a sizable younger demographic, the original “Neighbors” was fundamentally a film steeped in thirtysomething ennui: Its warmest, wiliest comedy captured the deflating self-recognition of those comfortably too young for middle age, yet emphatically too old to be down with the kids. That sneaky sense of generational limbo also sits at the heart of this slightly less-cuddly sequel, though its hapless victim has changed. While middle-class marrieds Mac (Rogen) and Kelly (Byrne) have settled contentedly into early parenthood, former college fraternity leader Teddy (Efron) is struggling to find his place in the world — even his low-ambition retail job at Abercrombie & Fitch has turned on him, demanding that the still-ripped underachiever now wear a shirt to work. What else can Teddy offer the world, if not his abs?
Considering it’s another trouble-in-suburbia comedy of modest proportions, boasting no innovations in form or technique, it may seem odd to say that “Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising” couldn’t — or at least wouldn’t — have been made a mere decade ago. Yet a distinctly current engagement with identity politics colors and complicates Nicholas Stoller’s rampantly rude, rowdy sequel to 2014’s squares-vs.-students farce: With sly sorority girls having replaced lunkheaded fratboys as the collective nemesis of Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne’s harried, hip-no-more homeowners, the film has a knowingly conflicted engagement with millennial-generation feminism that freshens its outlook even as it unevenly rejigs many of its predecessor’s gags. Still, while a subtly clawed Chloë Grace Moretz proves a worthy new foil, it’s Zac Efron’s tragicomic anatomy of a dudebro that remains this series’ sharpest asset.
Though its ribald antics (not to mention Efron’s copious and formidable shirtlessness) drew a sizable younger demographic, the original “Neighbors” was fundamentally a film steeped in thirtysomething ennui: Its warmest, wiliest comedy captured the deflating self-recognition of those comfortably too young for middle age, yet emphatically too old to be down with the kids. That sneaky sense of generational limbo also sits at the heart of this slightly less-cuddly sequel, though its hapless victim has changed. While middle-class marrieds Mac (Rogen) and Kelly (Byrne) have settled contentedly into early parenthood, former college fraternity leader Teddy (Efron) is struggling to find his place in the world — even his low-ambition retail job at Abercrombie & Fitch has turned on him, demanding that the still-ripped underachiever now wear a shirt to work. What else can Teddy offer the world, if not his abs?
