Beastly Reviews: Neighbors
Zac Efron is the James Dean of our time.
I’m Alexander Cheves, and this is LOVE, BEASTLY—a blog about sex, feelings, and manhood. It’s written mostly for men—gay, straight, bi, MSM, or just curious—but some readers are women, and some don’t fit into categories. Everyone’s welcome here.
This is Beastly Reviews, where I write about films that made me feel something.
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I was pleasantly surprised by Neighbors. In a cinematic milieu where hunky guys do superhero flicks and Oscars are given to pretty women who break out of their typecast, Zac Efron is content to simply be hot. And hot he is.
A millennial Marlon Brando, Efron became a sex symbol for tweens with his role in High School Musical on Disney Channel, but now he's all grown up. He's a man now.
In Neighbors, the new comedy from Nicholas Stoller (The Five-Year Engagement, Get Him To the Greek), we get a glimpse of something more from Efron—an actor still riding his sex appeal while flexing some true acting muscle (and actual muscle muscle). His role in this film is mostly to be cute—unapologetic eye candy—but his performance hints at more challenging, layered roles in the years ahead.
His Neighbors character is a frat bro, complete with abs and bad manners. But something changes in the film's third act. The light turns. He's sitting in a wheelchair, brandishing a baseball bat, plotting his next attempt to get back at Mac and Kelly (Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne), the couple that moves into the house next door. He looks dangerous, a kid on the verge of adulthood who may really get into trouble. It's a darker moment, a few seconds when the film switches out of comedy to give Efron's villain a twinge of depth.
Besides that, the film is the standard fare you expect in a Seth Rogen flick. Pranks are pulled. Poop jokes, pot jokes, and boobs. Neighbors unfolds much as we expect. We cling along for the punchlines between Rogen and Byrne (and for their strong onscreen chemistry) and to see Zac Efron from every angle—tanned, shirtless, cocky, giving it all for us.
Love, Beastly