The 2014 thirty-somethings vs. millennial college kids chaos comedy NEIGHBORS was a hit at the box office, earning nearly three times its $18 million budget on opening weekend alone, and over $150 million during its entire theatrical run. Needless to say, with those kinds of numbers a sequel was pretty inevitable. Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne are back for NEIGHBORS 2: SORORITY RISING… and walking in very familiar territory. This time a female sorority moves in next door, led by Chloe Grace Moretz, and the frustrated couple eventually turn to their old rival Zac Efron to give them an edge. It’s pretty much a gender-swapped retread of the first movie, but surprisingly it comes off as a smarter and more effective take on the same concept.

The film opens with Mac (Rogen) and Kelly (Byrne) making love, until Kelly vomits on him, indicating she’s pregnant with their second child. If you’re not good with throw up scenes in movies (like me), you may want to look away in this moment (seriously). With a new baby on the way, they decide to move to another home, and put their house on the market. A happy couple is interested, but they have to get through a 30-day escrow period first. Teddy Sanders (Efron) and his pals have left college life behind, but while his buddies have moved on, Teddy seems to be stuck in the frat boy mindset. Shelby (Chloë Grace Moretz) is leaving behind a friendless high school life and looking into her first college sorority. What she finds in a somewhat creepy cheerleader-esque group (led by Selena Gomez in an extended cameo) that looks a little too stuffy, so her and a few other like-minded girls decide to start their own sorority called Kappa Nu… and they end up renting the house next door to Mac and Kelly – of course. At first it looks like their idea will prove too costly, but Teddy shows up to give them guidance, and seems to think he’ll find in them the camaraderie left behind by his frat brothers. As the parties ramp up, Mac and Kelly begin to panic thinking they’ll lose their prospective buyers, and eventually the war between the family and sorority begins, and we the audience get to laugh at the antics while wondering at what point things will go too far.

There’s a somewhat surprising feminist undertone in NEIGHBORS 2 that elevates the material to a smarter and more meaningful level. In the first movie we saw a lot of fraternity partying and college antics, while feeling very silly and inevitably immature by the end. It was fun, but kind of forgettable and predictable. The sequel doesn’t just show a similar story from a more female perspective, it also acknowledges that just because girls want to party and have a good time doesn’t mean they want to forget their morals and not be able to exist on their terms. We also see growth in all of the characters, as Teddy has to emotionally move on and leave behind his immature ways, and Mac and Kelly have to see things from different perspectives than their own. While NEIGHBORS 2 is essentially a raucous college comedy, it’s also smart enough to tackle some legitimate issues without feeling like it’s pandering to the audience.

Rogen and Byrne felt like a mismatched pair from the start of the first film, but in a weirdly endearing way it kind of works, as often times in life we see couples that don’t seem to fit together yet somehow found one another. In this outing they’ve found a groove, convincingly playing a couple in sync and focused on similar goals. They’re also tragically unhip around folks half their age, just like we all end up as age runs its course. Rogen also doesn’t shy away from playing to his physical traits, never afraid to do shirtless scenes for the sake of a few laughs. Chloe Moretz seems to have fun playing the pothead outsider trying to find her place in this new stage of life, though she never seems as iconic or perfectly cast as Efron did in the first outing. It’s a different type of performance though, in that this character is meant to be determined without seeming overly confident. In the end, Efron seems to come off as the MVP this time out, as his character gets to go through some pretty solid story arcs, and Zac really comes across like he’s giving it 110% in every scene. The characters of Jimmy (Ike Barinholtz) and Paula (Carla Gallo) also return for this outing, and Barinholtz in particular gets some great moments as the chaos ramps up.

Nicholas Stoller returns as director after the first movie, and pulls off the rare sequel that’s not necessarily better than the first, though definitely more mature in a weird sort of way. There’s better closure here than the first movie, and in many ways it feels like a necessary wrapping up for these characters. As with several comedies these days, what’s most surprising is the exclusion of several key scenes featured in the trailer for the film. For example, in the red band trailer below you see a scene where the girls’ parents show up, and LL Cool J has a few funny moments… well, LL Cool J is nowhere to be scene in the movie. His scene is just one of several that were cut for some strange reason. Perhaps we can expect a more packed variation of the sequel in the home video version.

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