Bad Neigh­bours 2

In a mind-blow­ing open­ing gam­bit, Bad Neigh­bours 2 begins with the real life rev­e­la­tion that in the US, soror­i­ties are not allowed to throw their own house par­ties – only fra­ter­ni­ties can. This back­ward lit­tle frat fac­toid offers the film­mak­ers a the­mat­ic and comedic gold­mine, bring­ing to the fore an urgency and top­i­cal­i­ty that was sore­ly miss­ing from the first instal­ment in the fran­chise. Here, a bunch of soror­i­ty girls fight for their right to par­ty and are thus pit­ted against the exhaust­ed cou­ple at the cen­tre of the first film – Seth Rogan and Rose Byrne. For­tu­nate­ly, there’s way more at stake this time.

The first film cer­tain­ly offered plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ty to bring some lev­el of satir­i­cal scruti­ny to the con­cept of the frat house, to query their exis­tence and ques­tion their rel­e­vance in a sup­pos­ed­ly pro­gres­sive world. It’s hard to imag­ine the exis­tence of Zac Efron’s dude­bro frat, for instance, in the met­ro­sex­u­al, self-aware youth com­mu­ni­ties from Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s 21 and 22 Jump Street. It sim­ply and dis­ap­point­ing­ly didn’t engage with those possibilities.

This refusal to engage was designed to make the film fun­nier. That a new fam­i­ly of grown-ups liv­ing next door sim­ply have to accept the pres­ence of this aber­rant­ly back­wards com­pa­ny of hard-par­ty­ing bros and ​‘just deal with it’ was sup­posed to be hilar­i­ous. It wasn’t. Yet, even though it falls back on basic LOLs and broad slap­stick – despite occa­sion­al fris­sons of sex­u­al and gen­der unease – Bad Neigh­bours cel­e­brat­ed its dudes.

There is then some­thing dou­bly excit­ing about Bad Neigh­bours 2. An ear­ly sequence shows a frat par­ty from the point of view of a girl who refus­es to par­tic­i­pate in its bla­tant sex­ism. We’ve toured this space so often before with wide-eyed, delight­ed dude eyes and dude gaze in a thou­sand ter­ri­ble teen movies. See­ing it this time from a large­ly ignored and nec­es­sar­i­ly dis­gust­ed per­spec­tive is all the more thrilling because it unex­pect­ed­ly occurs with­in a fran­chise that nev­er once hint­ed at such lev­els of self-crit­i­cism and self-awareness.

In among the gross out, the drug gags and cul­ture clash com­e­dy famil­iar from the first instal­ment, this sequel sud­den­ly asks gen­uine­ly inter­est­ing ques­tions about the mind bog­gling sit­u­a­tions it com­plete­ly ignored pre­vi­ous­ly. Tak­ing view­ers seri­ous­ly in this way is cer­tain­ly a risky and bold move for a com­mer­cial Hol­ly­wood com­e­dy that began as a bald cel­e­bra­tion of frat cul­ture. But it’s what makes the film relat­able and excit­ing, some­thing that no men­tion of Al Pacino’s ​‘whoo ha’ in 1992’s Scent of a Woman, or couch con­ver­sa­tions about Bat­man, could pos­si­bly do the first time around.

The fact the first film did not address sex­ism at all works in the ser­vice of the sec­ond. The fem­i­nism of the return­ing male char­ac­ters – prin­ci­pal­ly Rogen and Efron – appears as a gen­uine desire to do bet­ter rather than an urgent and anx­ious change of heart. At one point Rogen’s Mac chides best mate Jim­my (Ike Bar­in­holtz) for call­ing a ​‘Men’s Rights’ fist bump dur­ing an argu­ment. His ​‘Fuck you’ feels real in a way that’s almost mov­ing in its off­hand sincerity.

But this is the gen­er­al mood and tone of the film as a whole. A sub­plot about Dave Franco’s Pete and his latent homo­sex­u­al­i­ty in the first film, which here has trans­formed into him mar­ry­ing his gay lover, is treat­ed sim­i­lar­ly as nei­ther an issue, nor a source of any real com­e­dy in the film. It’s just sim­ply there to deep­en the char­ac­ters. More­over, see­ing a room­ful of dudes shout­ing ​‘USA! USA!’ as their male friends make out feels almost euphoric.

One lengthy sequence has soror­i­ty ring­leader Chloë Grace Moretz’s Shel­by giv­ing blunt exam­ples of the sex­ism of frat par­ties to Zac Efron’s Ted­dy Sanders. Ted­dy does not fight back, but instead admits his care­less­ness and moves on to bet­ter things. Thank­ful­ly, all the sex­ism and fem­i­nist talk in the film is not por­trayed as a life-chang­ing, right­eous, hum­bling or humil­i­at­ing expe­ri­ence for our main dude but, dis­arm­ing­ly, as the most nat­ur­al thing – just anoth­er part of his nec­es­sary arc of mat­u­ra­tion. This is because the film does not por­tray sex­ism as the work of a few evil men, but rather as a sys­temic prob­lem, an old unques­tioned habit taught by soci­ety to men through­out their lives, and espe­cial­ly in col­lege. Look out for a tremen­dous­ly wit­ty play on the ​‘hoes’ fix­a­tion at col­lege par­ties and you’ll spot the film’s the­sis in a sin­gle joke.

But this sys­temic sex­ism goes for girls too, and the film is most inter­est­ing and thrilling when it fear­less­ly demon­strates that they too have to change their behav­iour. Teddy’s new pur­pose as an ally for the girls who plan to organ­ise their own fem­i­nist soror­i­ty high­lights the ways in which sys­temic sex­ism also works to under­mine their attempts to eman­ci­pate them­selves. This atti­tude of utopi­an equal­i­ty between Ted­dy and the girls is rem­i­nis­cent of, yes, Gre­go­ry Jacobs’ Mag­ic Mike XXL. A com­par­i­son made even more obvi­ous in a great male dance sequence that can only be read as a con­scious homage to our favourite com­mer­cial fem­i­nist film yet. Who would have thought that the sequel to a broad Seth Rogen frat com­e­dy could ever be worth men­tion­ing in the same sen­tence as that absolute gem of pro­gres­sive filmmaking?

But is it fun­ny? The film’s con­cern with seri­ous issues makes for tru­ly excit­ing and touch­ing moments of intro­spec­tion and for­give­ness. But it also makes way for a tor­rent of crass, intel­li­gent and delight­ful jokes. Beyond the film’s prin­ci­pal con­cern with explor­ing young women’s prob­lems with edgy com­e­dy, Jer­rod Carmichael – a rev­e­la­tion here – shines as a liv­ing com­men­tary on both the ​‘black best friend’ trope and Amer­i­can police bru­tal­i­ty. There are emp­ty fart jokes, of course, but the ambi­tion of the film’s dis­course makes its humour reach lev­els nev­er once aspired to in the pre­vi­ous film. The film’s gen­uine good-heart­ed­ness takes these prob­lem­at­ic jokes for what they are: prob­lem­at­ic jokes. It han­dles them perfectly.

With so much hap­pen­ing with the girls and Ted­dy Sanders, the film at times neglects the char­ac­ters posi­tioned as cen­tral in the first film, name­ly the young cou­ple played by Rogen and Byrne. While the first film played with the ten­sion between their par­ent­ing and their desire to par­ty, this is almost com­plete­ly dropped here as par­ty­ing is no longer por­trayed as some­thing stu­pid, but rather as a cel­e­bra­tion of fem­i­nism. Their recur­ring con­cern is, instead, anx­i­ety about being good par­ents, which is well han­dled but rather repet­i­tive. A non-issue, to be hon­est. But these are only real­ly minor quib­bles in a film that’s alive with ideas – fun­ny, refresh­ing, compassionate.