Neighbors doesn’t fulfil its promise

Speciality Theatre

Neighbours

**

Stars: Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne, Zac Efron.

Director: Nicholas Stoller.

Rated: R

Showing: Fri 2:30pm, 6:30pm, 9:30pm; Sat 2:15pm, 6:30pm, 9:45pm; Sun 2:15pm, 4:45pm, 7:30pm; Mon-Thurs 2:15pm, 6pm, 8:30pm.
Runtime: 96 minutes

Comedy.

Neighbors is an Animal House for The Hangover era, a frat-boy comedy that pushes the rude and raunchy envelope into daring and dirty new territory.

Hilariously coarse, reasonably shrewd and clumsily sentimental, there’s no reason it won’t earn a billion and inspire a whole new generation of party-hearty “bros” to go Greek when they go to college.

The hook here is not just the appeal of this band of brothers — drinking, dope-smoking, hard-living loverboys — to their peers. They’re also the sorts of people Mac and Kelly used to be and wish they still were.

But Mac (Seth Rogen) has an office job that is pure drudgery. Kelly (Rose Byrne) is staying at home with Stella, their newborn. They have to lie to convince themselves that the obvious hasn’t come true: “Just because we have a house and a baby doesn’t mean we’re old people.”

They strain to keep their old lives — sharing the occasional joint, spontaneous sex (in front of the baby), club hopping.

The trouble is for such a short comedy, Neighbors drags. Director Nicholas Stoller creates little momentum between the schemes and counter-schemes. Peripheral characters, while funny, show up and stop the action. Some of the “I love you, man” riffs between the bros are meant to be funny because they go on forever.

The outrageous stunts and boundary-pushing gags are as riotously funny as anything in any Hangover movie. And telling this story from both the frat brothers’ and the indignant nearly-adults next door’s point of view broadens the appeal. Yeah, we used to be like that. In our dreams.

But in between the belly laughs, Neighbors feels like a pulled punch, a mean comedy with a soft streak, a Hangover that never delivers the buzz.

Heaven is for Real

***

Stars: Greg Kinnear, Kelly Reilly, Thomas Haden Church.

Director: Randall Wallace

Rated: PG

Showing: Fri 2:15pm, 6pm,  9pm; Sat 4:45pm, 7:15pm,  9:15pm; Sun 2:30pm, 5pm,  7:15pm; Mon-Thurs 2:30pm,  6:15pm.

Runtime: 99 minutes

Drama.

Conviction is the word that keeps coming to mind in watching Heaven Is for Real, the latest faith-based film to debut this Passover-Easter season.

It is there in Todd Burpo’s story of his four-year-old son’s near-death experience, which the Nebraska pastor chronicled in his New York Times bestseller. It is present in the performances of stars Greg Kinnear, Kelly Reilly, Margo Martindale, Thomas Haden Church and an adorable six-year-old named Connor Corum.

It all serves to make Heaven Is for Real one of the better faith-based films to come along. 

REVIEW BY LA TIMES

Liberty Theatre

The Amazing Spiderman 2

***

Stars: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Jamie Foxx

Director: Marc Webb

Rated: PG-13

Showing: Fri-Sat 2:30pm (3D), 6pm (3D), 9:30pm (2D); Sun 2:30pm (3D), 6pm (2D); Mon-Thurs 2:30pm (3D), 6:30pm (3D).

Runtime: 142 minutes

Action, adventure, fantasy.

Amazing 2 is a violent film, with blood and death in between the digitally-animated brawls. Human bodies are tortured and broken, and there’s not always a web slinger there to stop that flipping police car, that hurtling bus, that Russian psychopath or that jet that’s about to crash.

It’s not an altogether pleasant experience. Things tend to drag as director Marc Webb has problems with focus, keeping the many story threads straight with  continuity (watch Gwen Stacy’s outfits). 

Many otherwise faceless extras pop off the screen as if he’s about to give their nameless characters the same significance as Stan Lee himself — who always has cameos in these Marvels.

But Andrew Garfield finds his voice as the main character, making his second try at Peter Parker a caffeinated wise-cracker, enjoying his notoriety, talking to himself just like the guy in the comic book. He’s funny.

Jamie Foxx is an ignored, humiliated electrical engineer who has an accident involving electric eels and power lines. 

That transforms him from a Spiderman fanboy into a glowing blue guy in a hoodie. In the ethos of this movie, Peter / Spidey reasons with the tormented villains, trying to connect with the doomed rich kid (Osborn) or this “nobody” engineer.

And while Garfield and Stone have a nice sass to their scenes, Webb can do nothing to give this relationship the longing and heat of the Kirsten Dunst / Tobey Maguire moments from the earlier films. So while this “Spider-Man” is, if anything, more competent than the first film, it’s still not one that demands that you stick around after the credits. There’s nothing there. 

Neptune Theatre

Grand Budapest Hotel

****

Stars: Ralph Fiennes, F. Murray Abraham, Mathieu Amalric

Director: Wes Anderson

Rated: R

Showing: Fri-Sat 7:30pm; Sun 5:30pm; Mon-Thurs 7pm.

Runtime: 100 minutes

Comedy.

I’m not sure what the formal definition of a masterpiece is, but The Grand Budapest Hotel strikes me as something very close. Wes Anderson, who wrote and directed those modern classics The Royal Tenenbaums and Moonrise Kingdom, now gives us Downton Abbey on laughing gas.

Sophisticated, silly and wildly incident-packed, it creates a mad rumpus at centre stage while hinting at tragedies waiting in the wings. There are fantastically-elaborate comic set-pieces, obsessively detailed puppet-theatre art direction, and brilliantly crafted action sequences.

This rare fusion of technical rigour and madcap wit seals Anderson’s claim on the title of America’s finest comic filmmaker.

It’s sheer screwball delight from one of the most original and brilliantly funny filmmakers ever to work in Hollywood. 

ALL REVIEWS BY MCT UNLESS STATED