There is a point in your life when movies about college hijinks stop being the free-for-all fun that they used to be where the glimpse of a nipple, the shaking of a rear, or the quaffing of copious amounts of alcohol start to lose their appeal. At some point, the struggle between the fraternity and the evil dean is a little simplistic and hard to justify. This movie is about the people who recognize that the real world has to take over at some point, and they are dealing with a frat moving into the house next door.
We are supposed to root for Seth Rogan and his wife (played by Rose Byrne) who have a newborn daughter and have to deal with this frat that just moved in. The problem is that they demonstrate none of the qualities that stable people in the real world have. They are terrible parents who leave their daughter unattended for huge swaths of time, they are irresponsible to the point that you have to wonder how they could have bought their house in the first place, and they do drugs at a pace that dwarfs almost everything that the frat house is doing.
Zac Efron and Dave Franco lead the charge of the frat brigade. They play the president and vice president respectively, and the frat is more relatable than the parents that we're supposed to be rooting for. Imagine rooting for the bad guys in Die Hard 2 - that's about what this movie is set up for. The only real person you can feel genuinely bad for in all of this is the little girl. That poor baby is going to have huge problems in the future.
The whole plot is pretty straight-forward with the parents who want to keep their property value and live in a nice, quiet community versus the loud, annoying frat guys who do terrible things yet somehow ingratiate themselves with the rest of the neighbors by doing odd jobs and generally being pretty good neighbors in general.
The dialog is pretty cringe-worthy at times, with Seth constantly using language that might have been appropriate for a college-aged black man, but not Seth - never Seth. Even the guys who are supposed to be the students don't exactly smell of actual college age language. Still, the dynamic between the two groups makes for an experience that is not the worst waste of an hour and a half or so.
Acting was okay
Story was not great
Dialog was not great
Production quality was pretty good
Direction was okay
1.75/5