It can be seen as another one of the creator's grand jokes that the very second we strive for immortality (having children) we become consumed with our mortality (getting old). Having kids can be one of the most fundamentally enjoyable and satisfying experiences of your life, but it's also the most all-consuming, calling into question what type of person you've become -- and maybe what part of your youth you've lost -- when you fully invest in being a parent.
Andrew J. Cohen and Brendan O'Brien are two young, relatively inexperienced writers, getting the green light for their screenplay on the strength of having worked with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg on The 40-Year-Old Virgin. It's nice of Rogen and Goldberg, whose collaborative writing credits include This Is the End, Pineapple Express and Superbad, to give these young whippersnappers a shot. They certainly show some comic promise, but the amateurish approach to character arcs and basic plotting would suggest they might yet need a fair amount of seasoning before they're really ready to take another shot at the big time.
Rogen plays Mac, a young husband whose beautiful wife, Kelly (Rose Byrne), has just given birth to their first child, a girl named Stella (Elise Vargas). Moving into a new house in a quiet neighborhood, and fully entrenched in an office cubicle job that requires him to wear a Homer Simpson-like tie with his short-sleeved shirt, Mac is trying to transition into young parenthood and its myriad of responsibilities. But he and Kelly still long to be the hard-partying, fun-loving couple they used to be before Stella was born. As much as Mac tries to play the straight breadwinner, he still sneaks off with his best bud, Jimmy (Ike Barinholtz), to smoke marijuana every chance he gets.
To the couples' horror, a fraternity house suddenly opens next door to them, Delta Psi, lead by charismatic president Teddy (Zac Efron) and his right-hand man Pete (Dave Franco, James' younger sib). At first it seems OK. Teddy and Pete agree with Mac and Kelly to keep their partying down on weeknights -- and the "old people" even enjoy a night of silly hedonism at their neighbor's house -- but things quickly turn bad after Mac calls the police the next night, angry that he can't raise Teddy on the phone. Before long, a war of sorts escalates, with the frat brothers doing whatever they can to make Mac and Kelly's life miserable, and the couple doing what they can to get the frat shut down by its parent school.
It's a setup that lends itself gleefully to a series of ever-escalating pranks, some of which have real comic promise, but because the film never bothers to ground its characters beforehand (Mac is essentially the standard Seth Rogen stoned-buddy-who-really-needs-to-grow-up persona, someone who, let us say, ain't much of a reach) or develop any sort of arcs for them, it keeps paddling along in the deep end of a fairly fetid pool, churning its limbs while slowly sinking.
Failing in its character development, the film switches on a dime in order to best serve the ramshackle plot: In one scene, Mac and Teddy are good friends; in the next, Teddy is furious and vengeful; still later, he's shown to be a total stand-up dude; the next a petulant punk, and so forth. Byrne's Kelly fares no better: She's a doting, loving mother who somehow keeps finding ways to stay out all night partying, leaving her daughter to the wiles of a baby monitor, and then getting upset at college students for displaying irresponsibility. As much as the film asks us to side with Mac and Kelly, it becomes increasingly difficult to do so. In their quest to be responsible parental figures while retaining their mad-partying ways, they become conniving, two-faced hypocrites. The film tries hard to keep everyone equally likable and in so doing makes them all vaguely hateful.
Without any glue to hold the characters together, the scenes continually splinter like dampened pressboard, jokes are left hanging, and the whole enterprise takes on the kind of slapdash sheen of shoddy construction. When all else fails, director Stoller just lets the camera rest on the film's two biggest attractions: a cute baby making adorable faces, and Zac Efron's insanely ripped body. There's a great and funny movie to be made about the sacrifices we make in the interest of building a family and struggling to retain our identity, but this is far from it. So without edge or conviction in it, the film even doubles back on itself: A pointless scene is added near the end, showing Mac and Teddy randomly running into each other and patching everything up, no harm, no foul. Bros mending fences.
So, everything resolved, Mac and Kelly lie in bed, reveling in their victory and attempting to make themselves feel better about having turned a corner into their scary, scary adulthood. "This [family] is the only party I want to be in," Mac asserts, as Kelly gives voice to a litany of comforting dull, adult things she has grown to enjoy, including The Container Store and seashell-shaped soaps. With the frat bros squashed, they're finally free to indulge their middle-aged obsolescence unfettered.
MovieStyle on 05/09/2014