LOS ANGELES – Heaven help the next generation of American women if “Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising” represents what Hollywood thinks of them. In Nicholas Stoller’s sequel to his 2014 “Neighbors,” even the with-it girls – the ones too freethinking to join a cookie-cutter sorority – are so dumb they make the bros in the first movie look like elder statesmen. Smarts aren’t the point, of course – the reason these freshmen strike out on their own, renting a house next to Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne, is that they hunger for their very own place to get stoned. But in their awkward attempt to shoehorn these kids into the first pic’s formula, Stoller and his writing collaborators care far less about creating believable characters than getting to the next laugh.
‘Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising’
Rating: R for “crude sexual content including brief graphic nudity, language throughout, drug use and teen partying.” Running time: 92 minutes.
Those yuks are plentiful enough to ensure a reasonable box-office return. But viewers prone to worries about Hollywood’s treatment of women – a fair chunk of whom are young students this film wants to attract – may be laughing less loudly than those around them.
In an uncharacteristically flat performance, Chloe Grace Moretz plays Shelby, who doesn’t fit the Barbie mold at the sorority she’s rushing, Phi Lambda. She sticks with rush even after learning that sororities can’t host their own parties, and must go to frat houses to get wasted. But at her first such party, the rapey vibe is so intense (is a “No Means Yes!” banner perhaps too subtle a clue?) she and new friends Beth (Kiersey Clemons) and Nora (Beanie Feldstein) decide to start their own club.
The search for a party house to call their own leads them to the vacant home next door to Mac and Kelly Radner (Rogen & Byrne), who successfully ran Zac Efron and his crew out in the last picture. But how will three girls pay the $5,000 rent? Enter an unlikely mentor: Efron’s Teddy Sanders, whose bros have done an astonishing amount of growing up in the two years since we saw them (and, in the case of Dave Franco’s Pete, come out of the closet).