(Spoilers)
Comedies are one of the hardest genres to make successful movies in, other genres often have several elements to fall back on but with a comedy it simply has to be funny or it doesn’t work. So far 2014 has been quite a quiet year for comedies, there have been some good efforts and some poor ones. In the case of Bad Neighbours I was concerned that all the funny bits would have been shown in the trailers, thankfully this isn’t the case.
Bad Neighbours is the first really funny in your face comedy of 2014 (that I have seen). There is a lot more comedy to this movie than what is featured in the trailers, however it really annoyed me that they included the airbag gag in the trailers as that is something that relies on shock value for a laugh – would have been better to have saved that in my opinion. However as I said there is a lot of other laughs to be had in this movie. Several of the laughs come from slapstick moments which are often my favourite and I really like to see this type of comedy being used instead of vulgar humour which can often just be unnecessary. At times Bad Neighbours does use vulgar scenes to attempt to get laughs although these were not needed and it was a shame that they thought that they had to be included. Despite these few scenes I really did love this movie and it was genuinely funny throughout. What impressed me so much was how funny it was across the board. There were funny characters, funny dialogue and funny sequences and these were consistent throughout. This was the reason that Bad Neighbours works so well as a comedy and was so strong.
Bad Neighbours sports a fantastic cast who all play their roles perfectly, each being so funny in their own right. Seth Rogen, Zac Efron and Dave Franco were all great and of course we know how well Rose Byrne is at comedy after Bridesmaids. Also it was amusing to see Lisa Kudrow make an appearance in the movie, this scene was met with a murmur of ‘look its Phoebe!’. Bad Neighbours also used references to popular culture really well including the likes of Batman, Robert DeNiro, numerous other celebrity impressions, Hollister and many more! The finale was great, and it the comedy levels did build well in this sequence, however the film needed to come to a more abrupt end, it did take to long to round up everything although this really isn’t an issue when the rest of the movie was just so funny. Bad Neighbours is a comedy I will definitely be adding to my DVD collection and will go down as one of the recent classics, much like The Hangover. It was also a lot stronger than any of the comedy efforts from 2013, really solid entertainment here – I would be surprised if anyone went to see this and didn’t laugh the whole way through!
BIGGEST FLAW – Some unnecessary vulgar moments (was funny without them)
BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT – Being funny across the board
Rating – 9/10
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