Seth Rogen needs a hit.
We’re not talking about more bong hits for the self-confessed stoner movie star. We’re talking a hit film following his recent flops The Night Before, Steve Jobs and The Interview. The latter film generated huge publicity when the cyber-attack on Sony was blamed on the Rogen-James Franco comedy fest sending up North Korea. But it ended up doing nothing commercially.
Rogen’s latest film is Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, a sequel to his 2014 comedy Neighbors, in which Rogen and Rose Byrne portrayed new parents at war with the leader of a party-loving fraternity next door played by Zac Efron. With the Neighbors sequel, Rogen and co. seem to be pioneering a new genre: the gross-out politically correct comedy.
Rogen and his four co-writers have made Pete (Dave Franco), the best friend frat boy of Efron’s character Teddy Sanders, gay. In the first film, Pete was resolutely heterosexual. He had a girlfriend, Brooke, and Rogen’s character, Mac, even walked in on them having sex.
But in Neighbors 2 Pete is about to marry his boyfriend, Darren, which means Teddy has to move out of their apartment. In the time between the first and second Neighbors, Teddy observes that Pete has been “figuring stuff out.”
Nothing wrong with that. Except that given Franco now has much less screen time, compared with his role in the first film, and there being no scenes featuring Pete and Darren together without also having Teddy in them, the filmmakers’ noble intentions have seemingly fallen victim to lazy PC stereotypes.
Franco acknowledged his new shrinking status when he said in a recent interview about Neighbors 2: “Even though I’m not onscreen for a significant amount of time, hopefully it will be very memorable.”
It’s tempting to think Rogen, 34, is using Neighbors 2 to atone for former sins. He recently told the Guardian: “It’s funny looking at some movies we’ve made in the last 10 years under the lenses of new eras, new social consciousness. There’s for sure some stuff in our earlier movies—and even in our more recent movies—where even like a year later you’re like ‘Eh, maybe that wasn’t the greatest idea’.”
He added: “There are probably some jokes in [2008 high school comedy] Superbad that are bordering on blatantly homophobic at times.”
Superbad is not the only time Rogen has faced accusations of homophobia. He was a co-writer on the final season of Sacha Baron Cohen’s HBO comedy Da Ali G Show, which featured the outrageously camp model Bruno Gehard.
In 2013 Rogen was “Roast Master” on the Comedy Central Roast of James Franco where his jokes about his sexually ambiguous actor friend included, ‘Every man wants to be him, and he wants to be in every man” and, “If there were two James Francos, they’d never stop butt-f**king each other.”
James Franco, of course, is Dave Franco’s elder brother.
Then there’s Neighbors 2’s message of female empowerment. The sorority that moves in next to Rogen’s house, led by Shelby (Chloe Grace Moretz), wants the same alcohol and partying rights as fraternities. Cue lines in the film such as, “She’s the boss of her own body” and “You’re super sexist! Every party is themed ho.”
Moretz, who herself has created headlines recently for her relationship with Brooklyn Beckham, son of David and Victoria Beckham, enthused: “We wanted to make the movie progressive…this is super realistic to girls my generation.”
To achieve this aim, the filmmakers recruited a roundtable of 15 women to reduce testosterone levels in Neighbors 2‘s script, which was penned by five men.
Great…except the gender equality message is diluted by the fact that you never hear the word “feminist” in Neighbors 2. According to director Nicholas Stoller: “We had this running joke where they [the sorority] were constantly talking about feminism but it was in the wrong way … and when we tested it, the word feminism was so divisive to the audience that we literally had to cut the word out of the film.”
Some have applauded Neighbors 2‘s wacky worthiness. Forbes critic Scott Mendelson wrote: “It is one of the best movies of the year,” a sentiment arguably funnier than anything in the film.
Neighbors made $150 million at the U.S. box office two years ago. Heat Street predicts Neighbors 2 will likely make a lot less than that, and its confused PC politics won’t help its commercial prospects.
Never mind the evolution of frat boy Pete. It seems like Seth Rogen is still “figuring stuff out.”
