Comedy sequels are hard. In the past, we’ve seen seemingly fool-proof templates like Ghostbusters and Caddyshack give birth to some of the most underwhelming sequels ever made. In fact, I can only think of one comedy sequel that’s as good as Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, and that’s 2014’s surprisingly self-aware 22 Jump Street. The reason, I think, that comedy sequels tend to die on the vine is that the temptation is too great to simply repeat successful gags from the original film. This always results in diminishing returns (Crank: High Voltage, while not necessarily a comedy, is majorly guilty of this). Neighbors was a solid structure on which to build a comedy franchise, but the minds behind Sorority Rising are too smart to fall into a trap. And they have an agenda.
Sorority Rising is a deeply feminist film, and female empowerment is a major running theme. The catalyst is when college freshman Shelby (Chloe Grace-Moretz) finds out that sororities can’t throw parties, only attend those thrown by frats (it’s a sexist double standard that the movie almost breaks the fourth wall to address; at one point a character flat-out says “Google it”; I did, and it’s more or less true).
This wouldn’t be such a problem if frat parties weren’t so terrifying for eighteen-year-old girls. Shelby and her new friends Beth (Kiersey Clemons) and Nora (Beanie Feldstein) briefly attend one, and when they decide to leave it feels more like an escape. “I didn’t feel safe there,” they lament, and it’s easy to see why. Director Nicholas Stoller (Get Him To the Greek, the first Neighbors) takes an inventive approach to shooting the frat party: the men tower over the women, the music is oppressively loud, and the only light comes from obscene flashes of neon.
The three girls decide to start their own sorority, Kappa Nu, and set up their sorority house in the vacated Delta Psi headquarters, right next door to Mac and Kelly Radner (Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne). Aiding the nascent sorority in a consultatory role is Teddy Sanders (Zac Efron), who has one of the best arcs of these two films.
For whatever reason, Efron’s star-making turn in the High School Musical films has failed to engender a true movie star transformation, despite his good looks and low-key delivery. His performances in films like The Paperboy and We Are Your Friends haven’t done much to establish him as a serious leading man, so why does Nicholas Stoller have such a sure hand with Efron? Part of it is due to Stoller’s keen understanding of different senses of humor; this is, after all, a director who made even Russell Brand palatable, first in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and again in Get Him To the Greek. Efron’s Teddy leaps at the chance to prove his value to someone – anyone – and in doing so, in allowing himself to experience Greek life from a woman’s point of view, he learns a lot about his beloved institution. One of Sorority Rising‘s best gags is his slow realization that all of Delta Psi’s themed parties (Pimps and Hos, Boise Boys and Ida-hos) were deeply sexist. “Oh,” he begins. “Oh!…That’s not good!” It’s perfect delivery.
The performances are terrific across the board. Rogen and Bryne excel, but for different reasons. It’s fascinating to see Rogen on the “snobs” side of an ’80s-style slobs vs. snobs comedy (think Animal House or Caddyshack), and he’s convincingly mature, embracing the inherent lameness of suburban fatherhood. Bryne, a terrific dramatic actress (see Damages or Insidious), is also a fearless comedic performer. In these two films, along with Spy, Get Him To the Greek, and Bridesmaids, she’s shown a remarkable faculty with punchlines and delivery. Hell, in Sorority Rising she even gets in a solid Insidious joke, and that’s not easy to do.
But Rogen and Byrne make a better team than anything, and that’s because they’re one of the few couples in pop culture today who seem to genuinely like each other. They never fight, they always have each others’ back, and they have a healthy sex life. At one point Kelly says to Mac – pudgy, shirtless, with a painted-on six-pack – “I’m so turned on by your muscles right now,” and we believe her.
Moretz is great, of course. She’s jettisoned the over-emoting tics of a child actor, and here acquits herself with toughness, cunning, and vulnerability. It’s a nicely layered performance of a character who could have been an uncompromising antagonist.
And that’s where Sorority Rising surpasses the first Neighbors: by structuring the film from both the viewpoints of Shelby and Mac/Kelly, the story doesn’t allow for a traditional antagonist. Mac and Kelly want thirty days of peace until their house is out of escrow (Mac, not understanding the concept, repeatedly says “I’ve got escrows”). This is understandable, but so is Shelby’s goal, which is to attain agency and self-realization in a system that discourages both. Because of this, it’s impossible to root against either team, regardless of how their war escalates.
Sorority Rising could have coasted on humor wrung from gross-out gags, rapid-fire curse words, and the generational gap. But it’s so much smarter than that, and a better film because of it. At the end of the day, it’s a sneaky way to get young men – many of whom will probably be frat boys themselves – into the theater so they can see college from a young, scared, girl’s perspective. Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising is funny as hell, but really it just wants to say: Hey, the way we treat young women at college is pretty fucked up.
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