In the last 15 years, the Apatow film troupe has become a dominant force in American film comedy. We won’t go a year anymore without one or two films produced by Apatow and starring one of his regulars (Seth Rogen, James Franco,etc.). And it is very understandable that the viewing public has gotten to a point where they feel a bit..annoyed at a perceived repetitiveness in the work being produced. I’ve managed to watch a large number of these films, not due to a strong love of Apatow’s work, but due to that previously mentioned prevalence in our culture, and I’ve come away with some mixed thoughts and feelings about them, Neighbors 2 being a prime example.
Neighbors 2 continues the conflict between Mac and Kelly (Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne) with Teddy (Zac Efron). This time a sorority moves next door just as Mac and Kelly have gone into escrow on their house in preparation for a new baby. The sorority is led by Shelby (Chloe Moretz) and they all end up in a series of comedic set pieces where characters go over the top and slapstick comedy ensues.
Much of Neighbors 2 is a retread of the first. We just have a new organization, this time made up of young women, who are causing the exact same sorts of problems. Mac and Kelly enlist their friends for help. The couple deal with their own feelings of inadequacy as parents. Thematically they are the least interesting part of the film. From a larger perspective, this is almost a meta-commentary on these actors being pushed aside for the more interesting ideas and themes that come out of what Zac Efron and the sorority members are doing.
Hands down, it is Teddy, Efron’s role, that makes the film worth watching. I wouldn’t say I am a fan of Efron, his choice in films has led us down very different paths. But here he is presenting an examination of the very type of person is likely perceived to be. Early on, we have a scene between Teddy and his former frat brothers from the first film. Everyone is growing up with steady jobs, careers even, and now getting married. Teddy still works at Abercrombie & Fitch and, due to the criminal record he got from the first film’s exploits, has a difficult time finding work beyond customer service. While the film plays this for comedy, Efron manages to bring some levity into these circumstances. Teddy is a dudebro still clinging to his past while everyone around him is moving on. He doesn’t cling to his fraternity days for a sense of glory, we are very quickly shown he wants to be part of a family.
The story of Shelby and her sorority is also set up right away with a ton of empathy. In an orientation meeting for an established sorority on campus, Shelby learns that by-laws make it impossible for women to throw parties so they are forced to attend frat parties. A visit to one leaves Shelby turned off by the exploitative nature of these parties towards women and she ends up finding some strong friendships among fellow female party goers. This is the impetus for their move next door to Mac and Kelly. By the end of the film, I didn’t have much sympathy for Mac and Kelly who, if we look at the generational lines laid by the film, would be the characters I was expected to side with. They are my contemporaries experiencing many of the same life changes I am.
However, Shelby and her friends’ struggle to carve out a piece of the college experience that represents their ideals of female empowerment and to not be viewed as “Hos” for the “Bros” is a much stronger theme. There is a moment in the film where Teddy begins to reminisce about the parties he threw and quickly realizes women were literally labeled “hos” at every single one. His personal realization is played both for laughs and with some poignancy. While he and Shelby are only separated by a handful of years, ideologically and sociologically, they were light years apart. Never once is Shelby’s point of view used to lampoon social justice or feminism, the sorority sisters are funnier than the older characters and evoke a greater sense of empathy.
Neighbors 2 will not change your life. It will likely make you laugh a number of times. What I came away with was a sense of freshness to the Apatow films. Director Nicholas Stoller is responsible for what I believe is the criminally overlooked Forgetting Sarah Marshall, another film that deals in a grown man not blaming women for his problems, but learning to admit his own part in why a relationship crumbled. These films are often marketed with an emphasis on the slapstick, over the top, gross out humor present in them. But given a chance, I think you’ll find something much more thoughtful and refreshing than presented in the marketing.
Dead of Winter is a board game from Plaid Hat Games, designed by Jon Gilmour and Isaac Vega. There are a lot of board and card games on the market in the zombie genre, so seeing yet another one might be a turn off. However, Dead of Winter brings some incredibly fresh and interesting elements to the table.
We’ve played Dead of Winter twice, once as a two player game and most recently with three players. My wife and I invited over a coworker, Tiffany, who is a big fan of zombie media, particularly The Walking Dead. Dead of Winter does a great job in recreating that group tension from shows like TWD. For our game, we used the recommended Main Objective of collecting sample from zombies to develop a cure. The first round of play was everyone getting used to their choices of actions and we managed to stave off the first crisis. What I enjoyed most was that almost every Crossroads card pulled came into play which created a lot more dramatic tension. I remember one of the my characters stumbled across an abandoned oil truck which would have brought a cache of Fuel into the colony (used to make multiple moves around the board during a turn). The catch was that the noise from the truck would bring half a dozen zombies to the outskirts of the colony, putting us on the verge of being Overrun. If a location is Overrun, the character with the lowest Influence is automatically killed, no way to avoid it. I decided against taking the tanker and a few turns later we had a Crisis that needed Fuel to stop it. Those sorts of moments make the game very re-playable because consequences for decisions always have an interesting way of coming back to haunt you.
Of the four titles, this felt the least like the beginning of something new, or the reintroduction of some element from DC Comics past. The story focuses on the Pre-New 52 Superman and Lana Lang unearthing the recently deceased Superman’s ashes. Lana made a promise that if he died before her, she would make sure his remains were with his adopted parents, The Kents, in Smallville. The two characters talk about old Superman’s experience with death and rebirth, and he’s pretty insistent this world’s Superman is going to be reborn eventually. It comes across a little meta-contextual about the silly nature of death and rebirth in comics. 
This was much more interesting and fresh than Superman: Rebirth. Tom King is able to reinvigorate some elements of the Batman mythos. The most stark change is to Calendar Man, a jokey gimmick whose crimes revolved around the seasons or holidays. Now Calendar Man is like Cronenberg body horror, his body shedding its entire skin seasonally. The best Batman villains are ones that unsettle us. With the whole Batman concept being so deeply embedded in human psychology, having horrors that poke around and disturb our minds is when the series shines. 
What this issue has going for it are two very underdeveloped characters. Simon Baz was introduced in 2012 but fell off into obscurity after a year. Jessica Cruz was introduced a year ago as Power Ring, the host to an otherworldly evil. In last week’s Justice League #50, she shook off her possession and was rewarded with Green Lantern ring. The two leads are used to emphasize the GLs as space cops, with a very reluctant and combative partnership.
Of the four Rebirth one-shots, this one felt like the best blend of a fresh style of writing while incorporating classic DC elements. The classic element is front in center in the form of a rekindling of the relationship between Green Arrow and Black Canary. There’s fun banter back and forth between these two and that makes the book. It’s also a done in one story, while the other Rebirth titles are just setting up their core titles. 
PopCult Reviews 