Tag Archives: #zacefron

Gold (2022)

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Release: Friday, March 11, 2022 (limited) 

👀 Hulu

Written by: Anthony Hayes; Polly Smyth

Directed by: Anthony Hayes

Starring: Zac Efron; Anthony Hayes; Susie Porter

Distributor: Screen Media Films

 

 

 

****/*****

Over the last few years, former Disney Channel star Zac Efron has been making some interesting moves, turning away from the eye candy roles that came to define him as a younger actor and embracing heavier dramatic material. His turn as Ted Bundy in 2019’s Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile proved he was eager to move beyond typecast and I’m not sure if there’s a more direct route to doing so than by playing a serial killer.

Indeed, if it were only the atrocity of Bundy that Efron had tapped into, maybe it would be easy to dismiss as gimmick — a desperate act of overcompensation. But when he commits himself in the way that he does in Gold, a viciously realistic survival thriller from Aussie director, writer and co-star Anthony Hayes, suddenly the days of High School Musical seem like prehistory. This is Efron operating on another level, evoking desperation and greed to stomach-churning effect. Sure, he benefits from Beth Halsted’s stunning make-up work, but he essentially holds the entire movie on his own and that’s no small feat.

Set sometime in the near future, Gold keeps the audience in the dark as far as the big picture is concerned. The script (by Hayes and his partner Polly Smyth) is as minimalist as the stripped-out coal mine that has become of the world. We’re post-apocalypse but we don’t know what caused humanity to be brought to its knees. A man named Virgil (Efron) train-hops his way to a remote outpost in the sprawling desert. Here he’s to catch a ride with another man, Keith (played in a gruff and world-weary manner by Hayes) who will take him to a mysterious place called The Compound, where Virgil hopes to find some stability doing hard labor. (Yeah, this movie is grim — imagine that for a happy ending.)

As the pair make their way in Keith’s weather-beaten truck we get drip fed little bits of their past and their musings on what is happening elsewhere. Not much is revealed, just enough to get an idea Virgil may be carrying around a little too much sensitivity in this place, while Keith appears/sounds the genuine article as a frontiersman. But the proof will be in the suffering when the pair make the incredible discovery of a massive chunk of gold and hatch a plan to extract it. Too big to move by hand or even truck, Virgil insists he stay behind to guard their riches while Keith will head back to get an excavator, a round trip of about five days or so.

Fine if you’re staying at the Ritz-Carlton, not so much if you’re hitching yourself to a lone, sun-parched tree with minimal food and water supplies. At least he has a satellite phone? High winds, reptiles, wild dogs — these are some of the amenities Virgil gets to enjoy as he goes full Aron Ralston in 127 even more desperate hours, squaring off against dehydration, starvation and paranoia as each passing sun and moon adds to the feeling of abandonment. It’s a startlingly authentic portrayal from Efron, who is a strong reason to see yet another movie titled Gold.

Though filmed in the Flinders Ranges of the Outback the movie is shot tightly, with a raw intimacy that never allows you to get comfortable. As director, Hayes uses the crunch of COVID-era restrictions to fashion a harrowing tale of obsession and survival where space is put to use in ways both creative and cruel. As screenwriter, his judgment of time elapsing is one of the most powerful driving forces, with a variety of cuts to Efron’s façade depicting a man utterly wasting away in the elements.

Gold is undeniably a familiar yarn, one where a carefully curated song at the end spells out the lesson learned in big letters. When a scavenger (played with sinister intent by Susie Porter) appears on the scene, the haggard signposting of where things go are as obvious as the glinting jewel. Still, the heaviness with which certain developments land is not to be discounted. Dismissing the saga as overly familiar does a disservice to the intensity and authenticity of the experience.

Gnarly and visceral, Gold is entertaining in that morbidly fascinating way movies about the corruptive power of wealth often are — it’s not full-blown Shadenfreude, but at some point sympathy drops away and yields to pity. Even with sparse personality, the technical aspects make everything feel real and hard to look away from, even when you want to.

5G coverage, my ass

Moral of the Story: 127 Hours meets The Treasure of the Sierra Madre meets The Martian (the latter, in a more painfully specific way I guess). Harsh and pretty conservative in terms of action, Gold won’t be everyone’s idea of a fun Saturday night but for those looking for proof of Zac Efron’s talent, look no further. 

Rated: R

Running Time: 91 mins.

Quoted: “I can handle it.”

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited. 

Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.screendaily.com 

The Beach Bum

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Release: Friday, March 29, 2019

👀 Hulu

Written by: Harmony Korine

Directed by: Harmony Korine

Starring: Matthew McConaughey; Snoop Dogg; Isla Fisher; Zac Efron; Martin Lawrence; Jimmy Buffett

Distributor: Neon

 

 

**/*****

Spoiler alert for those who demand any lessons or morals be taught in a movie: The Beach Bum is not for you. It’s a hedonist adventure “from the mind of” Harmony Korine, a not-for-everyone kind of filmmaker notorious for creating dreamlike experiences that more or less forsake substantive story for hypnotic style.

His latest once again brings together a wild assortment of famous people: Isla Fisher, Jonah Hill, Zac Efron, Snoop Dogg, Martin Lawrence and Mr. Margaritaville himself, Jimmy Buffett. However The Beach Bum is more notable for being the first time the Gummo director has collaborated with Matthew McConaughey, who plays the titular tropical vagrant, a sun-bleached blondie who goes by the name Moondog. Once a lauded poet he has become human driftwood floating through life in the Florida Keys, getting tangled up in all sorts of situations that are perhaps best left for your own two eyes to try and process. He’s a character who is larger than life but smaller than legend, one who somehow makes James Franco’s gangster seem boring (though I raved about him in my review of Spring Breakers).

The Beach Bum is a bizarre trip full of lows but far more highs — the ones delivered by gas mask bongs, joints the size of a child’s arm and bud-producing trees kept in special rooms. With apologies to Fast Film Reviews’ Mark Hobin, I need to steal a line: The atmosphere is so drugged out you could almost get high by association. This is taken from a review of a certain Paul Thomas Anderson movie from 2014, but it is an apt description of this experience as well. Oh, and There Will Be Boobs. Like, an abundance of them. An anchor-less vessel who frequents the sun-kissed beaches and small tourist traps freckling the tropicana, Moondog just can’t help but be around and/or in between them.

If there is a story to be deciphered here it’s how Moondog draws upon his mangy, transient experiences for inspiration to return to his old writing form. I’m no judge of poetry but his seems the kind of shallow you don’t make deeper, even by getting more baked. Lingerie, played by Snoop Dogg (a real-world connoisseur of kush and good rhymes) digs it though so what the hell do I know. Accompanied by a stray kitten he finds in the opening scene, an almost endless supply of Pabst Blue Ribbon tall-boys and an actually endless supply of zest for living by his own code, the man and the narrative become one and the same, stuck in idle throughout. Zac Efron and Martin Lawrence get caught in his wake along the way, all while his daughter Heather (Stefania LaVie Owen) grows increasingly worried about his stability and his wife (Isla Fisher) pays a steep price for loving him.

The main issue with The Beach Bum is not its lack of “a point.” It’s that Korine insists this gadabout has virtuous traits. He’s not flagrantly abusive like the loser Efron portrays and even in thongs he’s not as cartoonish as the skuzzy douche of an agent Hill plays, so I suppose he’s a crop above but his Better Self is so well buried that his journey to self-actualization becomes contrived at best. This is not exactly harmful tokage but it becomes surprisingly challenging to separate in your mind the likable McConaughey from the frequently less-than-likable Moondog. Call that commitment to character. The Beach Bum isn’t a very good movie. It is, however, the epitome of a Harmony Korine experience. The cinematography is sexy and dripping with color, and that is at least enough to get a good buzz off of.

Better to float adrift than drown in sorrow

Moral of the Story: I’m a big fan of Matthew McConaughey, who winds the clock back to Dazed and Confused as Moondog, and his commitment to another memorable character here is not to be understated (it’s the reason this final rating is as high as it is) but I didn’t really find his character entirely redeemable. Anyone who saw Spring Breakers and didn’t get along with it probably should give The Beach Bum the old swerve. It’s available on Hulu though so really all it will cost you is a breezy 90 minutes . . . 

Rated: R

Running Time: 95 mins.

Quoted: “I get all these things going, man, and they are all turning me on. And my wires are connecting upstairs and I start to hear music in my head. You know, and the world is reverberating back and forth and I hit the frequency and I start to dance to it. My fingers get moving, my head gets soupy, I’m spinning all over the place, and the words come out.” 

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Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.imdb.com 

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile

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Release: Friday, May 3, 2019 (limited) 

👀 Netflix

Written by: Michael Werwie

Directed by: Joe Berlinger

Starring: Zac Efron; Lily Collins; Kaya Scodelario; Angela Sarafyan; Haley Joel Osment; Jim Parsons; John Malkovich; James Hetfield 

Distributor: Netflix

 

***/*****

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile may appear on the surface as a redundant exercise. Do we really need another take on the American nightmare that was Ted Bundy? Like it or not we have come to know the man behind at least 30 murders of women down to his jaw structure, down to the most grisly details of his most heinous actions. We’ve even taken note of his days working as a call taker at a suicide prevention center in Seattle.

Extremely Wicked justifies its own existence through the harrowing perspective it shares, that of Bundy’s longtime girlfriend Elizabeth Kloepfer. The dramatic feature from highly influential documentarian Joe Berlinger is based upon the memoir written by the real Kloepfer (Kendall her pen name), and paints a picture of domestic bliss slowly rotting, one in which its stars, a chillingly effective Zac Efron and an equally impressive Lily Collins, dance delicately along a clearly defined yet precarious line dividing dramatization and reenactment. These are challenging roles to portray without sensationalizing, and with the guidance of Berlinger’s sensitive direction they rarely, if ever, hit a false note.

The one exception being the way the former High School Musical star interprets his character’s reaction to the final sentencing, Efron putting on a waterworks display that feels out of sync with his character’s alien-like indifference to the lives he took. The tears are a little too theatrical even considering the antics that went down in those trials. Indeed those trials were a circus in which you might recall Bundy throwing out his own defense team and acting as his own legal counsel, even having the audacity to take advantage of an obscure Florida law that allowed him to propose during his second murder trial (in 1980) to witness Carol Ann Boone (Kaya Scodelario in the movie) — a former coworker at that Seattle crisis center, a stalwart of Team “Of Course I’m Innocent, Look at Me!” all the way up to the point of their divorce in 1986, three years before Bundy’s execution.

Scodelario does well to garner our sympathy — she’s nothing more than another victim, albeit a lucky one, of Bundy’s brutally manipulative mind-game. But if Boone was just played for a fool, Kloepfer was essentially a concubine of Bundy’s deceitful charade, her heart held hostage by a smooth talking, intelligent predator. In one of the movie’s heaviest moments we see all of that come down on her, the reality that she had blindly allowed a serial rapist and murderer to help raise her own child, Molly. He, in return, secured the unconditional love of an innocent child. It’s upsetting stuff. As time marches on Collins’ performance becomes more gesticulative and broad, Liz disappearing in a haze of cigarette smoke and alcohol-fueled depression as her own concern turns to fear and tensions between the two continue to mount as the lie continues, evolves. Yet her work is never less than sickeningly effective in communicating how trapped this woman must have felt, pinned between a romantic idyll of the man she’s with and the ugly reality of his face routinely showing up in the papers.

It’s the intense focus on this relationship, on a perception of normalcy that also justifies Extremely Wicked‘s stylistic choices, namely the omission of graphic violence and even the abductions themselves. We more often than not see Bundy fleeing the scene in his beige VW beetle and in a calm, cool and collected state even in the face of suspicious lawmen. (Side note: if you thought the casting of Efron, a known sex symbol, was an interesting choice, A) you’ve missed the point completely and B) it’s not as weird as seeing Metallica’s physically imposing frontman James Hetfield as Officer Bob Hayward, a Utah patrolman and the first officer to arrest Bundy. It’s a double-take moment, yet the casting isn’t completely out of left field, as Berlinger co-directed the Metallica documentary, Some Kind of Monster, back in 2004. And for what it’s worth, he acquits himself well in his first ever scripted performance.)

Berlinger is no stranger to potentially upsetting and controversial material. His Paradise Lost trilogy of documentaries exposed a terrible real-world witch hunt that had condemned three young men either to execution or life in prison for a crime in which they ultimately were found innocent. Yet his work has also had a profound, real-world impact. The release of those films actually expedited the release of at least one of those men in the West Memphis Three case. I’m not so sure this film has had the same sobering effect. More of film Twitter seemed to get hung up on the hunky casting (again, by design) and whether or not Efron even had it in him to convince you of Bundy’s extreme wickedness (he does).

Rather than trampling on the victims’ memory by dramatizing their last moments alive, Berlinger instead focuses on the emotional and psychological disintegration of Kloepfer who for so long denies the deranged duplicitousness that allowed her boyfriend to freely move in between their shared sanctuary and the streets of an unsuspecting America as he engaged in a spree of murders that, at its height, saw women disappearing at a rate of one every 30 days. Extremely Wicked is a film about juxtaposition, the seemingly impossible contrast between sweet naivete and outright monster. It leaves you feeling dirty. Violated. It’s a disturbing account of factual events that needs little graphic imagery to convey the evil and the vile.

Moral of the Story: Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (which takes its long-winded title from the official opinion handed down by the judge presiding over the trial, the Honorable Edward Cowart, played by John Malkovich) I’d imagine works pretty well as a companion piece to the documentary. Me, though, I’ve had my fill with this drama. Biggest takeway: the performances are uniformly good and some truly unsettling. I never thought I’d say I would be scared of Zac Efron. (Some offense intended.) Film also features strong input from Haley Joel Osment as one of Liz’s concerned coworkers, and Jim Parsons as a Florida attorney tasked with presenting some of the most disgusting details you’ll probably ever hear from this particular horror show.

Rated: R

Running Time: 110 mins.

Quoted: “People don’t realize that murderers do not come out in the dark with long teeth and saliva dripping off their chin. People don’t realize that there are killers among them. People they liked, loved, lived with, work with and admired could the next day turn out to be the most demonic people imaginable.”

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.imdb.com

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates

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'Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates' movie poster

Release: Friday, July 8, 2016

[Theater]

Written by: Andrew Jay Cohen; Brendan O’Brien

Directed by: Jake Szymanski

Have you saved the date for the Stangle wedding yet? There’s really no need if you don’t typically RSVP for the raunch, for the kind of testosterone-induced antics that invariably wind up with someone’s penis in something it should not be, good-looking women tripping on MDMA and frolicking with horses and a happy ending that materializes out of thin air. I’m not sure if I’m generalizing anymore.

The package looks a bit different because the title is long (though uncreative) and the cast and crew are mostly up-and-comers. We haven’t yet seen anything from director Jake Szymanski, who has a rather prolific short-film résumé that includes 2009’s Denise Richards’ Fun Bags. That’s a title that pretty much gives you everything you need to know about his feature debut, but even still he’s a fresh director with a lot of talent in front of the lens as well, so there is potential here.

After suffering through years of watching his sons make fools of themselves at every single family get-together, the alpha-Stangle, Burt (Stephen Root — bless this man), insists Mike (Adam Devine) and Dave (Zac “I’m impossibly photogenic” Efron) find themselves two nice girls to join them as dates to their sister Jeanie (Sugar Lyn Beard)’s upcoming wedding in Hawaii. So they put out an ad that eventually gets the attention of hard-partying girls Tatiana (Aubrey Plaza) and Alice (Anna Kendrick).

The story spends time getting us acquainted with both parties before eventually forcing worlds to collide in a perfectly contrived manner when Tatiana walks out into traffic, creating a scene that eventually introduces them to the boys who just so happen to be in the vicinity. Her recklessness is inspired by wanting to do something nice for her best friend Alice, who is still trying to recover from the fact her would-be husband literally said “I do . . . . not” at the altar.

While Kendrick — annoying as she is in this movie — is the beneficiary of some background development, we never really get to understand why Tatiana is the way she is. Plaza just seems to enjoy playing unreasonably skanky women these days. Since seeing her on Parks & Rec, I thought I was onto the next Kristen Wiig, queen of the deadpan. I’m not sure anymore if she’s playing them ironically or if these are characters Plaza really believes in, but . . . I guess if you have to skank it up, skank it up girl! I’ll still be a fan. God knows why. Maybe because she’s a dead ringer for an ex of mine. Maybe.

Meanwhile, boys will just be boys. Devine and Efron establish a terrific repartee that allows them to rise above every single opportunity Szymanski seizes to subdue them with endless clichés. They may not shift the needle of the narrative into territory worthy of any kind of further cultural, social or psychological/emotional discussion, but they are by far the best thing about a movie that relies heavily on the strength (translated in this case as charm) of its lead performers.

It certainly doesn’t bank on the novelty of its screenplay. Mike and Dave at best offers a surprisingly wholesome message about the importance of family and how they accept you for who you are, no matter how many weddings you turn into Project X. Having people that care about you, about your past, present and future is what matters more than getting your strange on. In a movie of its ilk, that’s a rarity, and why it ultimately won me over.

Mike and Dave

Recommendation: Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates doesn’t so much subvert as it manages to balance raunchy comedy with a heartfelt message. Mike and Dave would make Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson proud.

Rated: R

Running Time: 98 mins.

Quoted: “Two hands! Pushing the pop! PUSHING THE POP!” 

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed, written consent of the blog owner is prohibited. 

Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.imdb.com 

Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising

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'Neighbors 2' movie poster

Release: Friday, May 20, 2016

[Theater]

Written by: Nicholas Stoller; Andrew Jay Cohen; Brendan O’Brien; Evan Goldberg; Seth Rogen

Directed by: Nicholas Stoller

Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne have the worst luck when it comes to suburban living. Last time they were fighting tooth and nail to keep their sanity when a hard-partying fraternity, led by a half-naked Zac Efron, moved in next door. Now, they’re struggling to make sure their house gets sold to another couple when they see an even rowdier group of youngin’s moving in to the former frat house, only this time it’s a sorority established by the perennially annoying Chloë Grace Moretz.

In the annals of pointless comedies, Nicholas Stoller’s follow-up ranks pretty high up there. It’s a film ostensibly designed to tear down the infrastructure portrayed in almost every motion picture that doesn’t “get” what it means to be a part of Greek life. In fairness, the sisterhood has never seemed more legitimate than it does here — despite the fact Moretz’ spoiled brat Shelby has created this group out of her disillusionment during rush week for Phi Lambda. (Oh mah gawd, we can’t smoke weed? Lol, wut?) Stereotypes are not only broken down but trampled upon with the frenzied weight of a summertime bacchanalia.

That’s the only thing truly refreshing about Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising — an awareness that sororities do indeed get a bad rap in movies and for that matter, in the minds of anyone who never found themselves within a thousand feet of the nearest function. Meanwhile, somewhere in the background the Radners are trying to graduate to the next phase of responsible adulthood. But that’s less important than the half-baked rhetoric that college kids can be more mature than their beer-and-jizz-stained attire suggests.

Consider the first impressions Shelby and her friends, Beth (Kiersey Clemons) and Nora (Beanie Feldstein), have when they enter a frat party one night: there’s a distinctly “rapey vibe” about the place. They’re so disgusted by what seems to be the accepted norm here and everywhere that they start up their own fledgling sisterhood, and wouldn’t you know it, their house is right next door to a couple of nagging thirtysomethings.

And here come the contradictions: Shelby and company are mature enough to recognize a sexist party when they see one, yet they have absolutely no respect for the community around them, especially when their immediate neighbors are scarcely more than a decade older than they are. Shelby’s a daddy’s girl but sees Mac as an anally retentive old man, and she can’t think of Kelly as anything other than a “mom.” Worse, the Radners are far from the most uptight parents you’ll come across. In fact part of the comedy stems from their recklessness (why they don’t separate the adult toys from their child’s playthings is a mystery to me).

It has to be this way, of course, otherwise Neighbors 2 would be a few mean-spirited pranks short of “a good time.” The story lifts the visual and slapstick gags from the previous outing and plops them down here with middling success. The exploding air bag is back as are the slow-motion dramatizations of people smacking into large, stationary objects. Some of it is actually pretty funny but more often than not this is a film that feels tired and uninspired. Bratty behavior dominates while the film’s attempt at thoughtful meditation on growing up feels like a cheap plastic label that a child could easily tear off.

Screen Shot 2016-06-01 at 4.18.55 PM

Recommendation: Nicholas Stoller was funnier the first time he visited this material. There’s really not enough there to justify two Neighbors movies, but this is the day and age we live in, isn’t it? I think the only thing I can recommend this movie on is its willingness to subvert stereotypes here and there, even though these attempts are mostly undone by a series of contradictory actions and strands of character “development.” And why in the hell are there five writers credited here? 

Rated: R

Running Time: 92 mins.

Quoted: “I’m a human woman! I need to watch this!”

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited. 

Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.imdb.com

Neighbors

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112646_gal

Release: Friday, May 9, 2014

[Theater]

Oh, there’s a condom on my front lawn; I guess here goes the neighborhood.

A young married couple’s dreams of making many a wonderful memory in their first home together are dashed when they learn that a fraternity is moving in next door.

Despite said frat house being filled with rowdy, hormonal twenty-year-olds who all excel at making social connections, it’s Mac (Seth Rogen) and Kelly Radner (Rose Byrne) who take the first step to meet their new neighbors. Of course, their wanting to introduce themselves doesn’t come without a motive. The Radners would like to lay down some ground rules so that both parties understand one another and life may go on without incident. But after a party one night, any supposed understanding that was held between both houses is quickly forgotten and the Radners are forced to call the police after being kept awake all night.

Mac sees no reason why the phone call should cause problems. After all, they did honor Delta Psi President Teddy Sanders (Zac Efron)’s one simple rule: give him a heads-up before resorting to calling the cops. Indeed, they try their best to honor it multiple times but their calls go unanswered, which leaves Mac and Kelly with no choice but to have the party busted up. Unfortunately, the members of Delta Psi see this as a big breach of trust and an open invitation to start making life difficult for their crotchety neighbors. Pranks escalate from innocent physical gags (surprise, there’s an airbag in your couch!) to some seriously creative stunts that pose threats to public health and safety.

The same directorial vision responsible for relatively robust comedies such as Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Get Him to the Greek and The Five-Year Engagement is now taking American suburbia by storm. Originally titled Townies, this is a film where all of the themes are in some way, shape or form recycled from comedies of an Apatow ilk. Call it predictable, but Rogen being Rogen here just might be the best thing for this farce. Even though Stoller’s new film is moulded through formula, here the familiarity creates an experience that’s wholly surprising — if only because of how much pain and how many tears the content is capable of producing.

If comparisons help, think Superbad meets Home Alone.

Many thanks are owed to great chemistry between Neighbors‘ key players. Rogen and Byrne have an undeniable charm that actively boosts one another’s confidence, to a degree that their performances often feel improvised; performances that thrive off an uncontrollable and manic energy present in whatever room they are in. Where Byrne and Rogen must exercise caution in not overplaying their immaturity, boisterous performances from Efron and Dave Franco as fraternity leaders manage to balance maturity and all-out debauchery to the point where each character’s mental state could turn on a dime and remain thoroughly believable.

Admittedly, Efron’s a serious concern going in. He doesn’t seem to be the caliper actor one can take seriously, even when put up against the likes of a man who’s had relative success doing stoner comedies almost exclusively for a living. But preconceived notions of this Hollywood hunk are shattered when Efron reveals a fraternity president who is equal parts prideful and altruistic — convincingly so, too, as he shows compassion towards his pledges in a particular scene which likely no one is going to see coming. Its a development that truly gives Neighbors credibility as a comedy. We want to party with these people because they show some sense of decency. Contrast that to the parents, who demonstrate a surprising thirst for vengeance.

Regardless of its archetypical premise, and the fact that the story won’t exactly be seared into any viewer’s long-term memory, the new film from Stoller is the new big boy comedy on the block. Filled with strong performances — a surprisingly sympathetic Efron is arguably the largest and most pleasant surprise — and an impressive consistency with its variety of gags both perverse and clever, Neighbors is one of the best comedies of the year so far.

For the ladies, I present Zac Absfron

For the ladies, I present Zac Absfron

3-5Recommendation: The obvious attraction is the name Seth Rogen, and coming in at a close second is the conflict he has with the neighboring frat house. Rogen not only doesn’t fall short of, but in some ways he surpasses expectations with a performance that might be his most coherent thus far. His pairing with Rose Byrne is simply perfect, but the fraternity brothers’ characterization is the real winner. They are simultaneously a blast to watch and the biggest reason to root for the older couple. If you expect things to go beyond the ridiculous, this is right up your alley. Plus, this features a full-on fight with dildos, which obviously no comedy can ever be without.

Rated: R

Running Time: 96 mins.

Quoted: “Infinite. . .B.J.’s. . .”

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.imdb.com