Movie Nation

Wit, provocateur, satirist and social gadfly — “I’m famous,” Frank Zappa liked to say, “but most people don’t know what I do.”

He made his living as a performer and band-leader of the Mothers of Invention, conjuring up dissonant orchestrations, and hilariously catchy and often off-color ditties about not eating “Yellow Snow,” a “Valley Girl,” a “Disco Boy” or “Dinah Moe Humm.”

Zappa’s fame was built on controversies, public appearances, against-the-grain social and political stances and interviews. Nobody gave interview like Frank.

That’s how Thorsten Schutte (Zappa would LOVE that name) built his film, “Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words.” It’s a documentary concocted out of decades of film and TV interviews — some confrontational, some awkward, often quite funny.

Because Zappa’s real gift might have been comedy. His bemused cynicism burst through his lyrics and permeated his public persona. He could turn to the camera and deadpan a bigger laugh than most stand-ups. And so he does, early and often, in this 90 minute celebration of his life and music.

It’s not all laughs. There was his battle with those — Tipper Gore, et al — who wanted age-appropriate ratings on records, prompting a funny exchange in a Congressional committee hearing. The Royal Albert Hall tried to cancel a symphonic multi-media show once they realized he’d be showing nude images and himself flipping the bird in film footage projected on stage. And we see his last TV interview, dying of cancer, not quite defiant, but snarky to the end.

Schutte creates a public picture of the man, who could play the music snob with the best of them, a musician Above It All, especially that sell-out pop music thing.

But here he is, on “The Mike Douglas Show,” on “What’s My Line?”, shilling and selling.

“Who you jivin’ with all that cosmic debris?”

He was always good for a laugh, Mephistophelian goatee, lustful leer and all. That was obvious from the start, his first national exposure, on Steve Allen’s show. He’d written music for two bicycles, recorded electronic noises and improvised big band blurts. He was young, clean-shaven and wearing a suit. But the sarcasm, the wink-at-the-audience drollery at putting on the show’s host? Vintage Frank. Just two composer/polymaths ribbing each other — a hoot.

The film is a celebration, so even though we catch him on stage at his most sexist (“Dinah Moe Humm”) and borderline homophobic (“Bobby Brown Goes Down”), that corner of his reputation is not explored. The sexually compliant females which he inserted into his songs, joking about rape (in character), the British talk show in which he praised groupies for delivering “the ultimate gesture of worship — human sacrifice”, the man could certainly provoke.

His defense, that it was all in the name of satire (more like Randy Newman’s “Short People” than Andrew Dice Clay’s “in character” stage act) rings true but a little hollow. His body of work points to a tolerant gadfly ahead of his time in a lot of attitudes and stances. Maybe not that far ahead, though.

But “Eat That Question” captures him at his most articulate, most colorful and most playful, an entertainer who lived his life performing one long, droll eye-roll at music, musicians and the “plastic people” who consume it.

MPAA Rating: R (nudity, profanity)

Cast: Frank Zappa, Steve Allen, Katie Couric, many others
Credits: Directed by Thorsten Schutte. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

Running time: 1:30

Oscar winner Dianne Wiest and “Selma” star David Oleyowo clash ever-so-quietly around the edges of grief in the short and somber “Five Nights in Maine.”

The debut feature of writer-director Maris Curran aims for cryptic, and she gives us only little morsels of back story to cling to. But a fine cast almost compensates for that, with Wiest and Oleyowo exploring the guilt — earned or unearned — that follows a loved one’s early death.

Fiona (Israeli actress Hani Furstenberg) was Sherwin’s wife. We’ve met them playing, adorably, in bed. We’ve seen her go to the pool for exercise.

And then there’s the phone call — a fatal car crash. Sherwin (Oleyowo) collapses into mourning, followed by a sullen withdrawal from the world.

Fiona’s estranged mother has called. Sherwin’s sister tries to fend her off. But no, there’s no getting around it. He must pull himself together, pack Fiona’s ashes, leave Atlanta and visit the woman his wife’s last phone message said they needed to see “before it’s too late.”

Lucinda lives in the coastal woods in a farmhouse. She’s a tactless grump. She’s had cancer. She’s entitled.

“Was she drunk?” she wants to know of her daughter.

“No, she was a GOOD driver.”

“Not THAT day.”

Over his five days there, flashbacks and other hints detail the state of Sherwin and Fiona’s marriage, their karaoke courtship (“I Wanna Dance with Somebody”) and parenthood plans. But there was trouble.

That might explain why there’s just a little too much easy familiarity between Sherwin and Lucinda’s nurse, charmingly played by Rosie Perez with all of the shrill edges rubbed right off.

Sherwin bristles at the occasional brusque brushoff by Lucinda and starts to understand what drove the daughter away from both her and this isolated, provincial town where he’s plainly the only person of color.

Curran went to the trouble to set and shoot her film in Maine, but makes little use of the place, other than showing us a swimmin’ hole, and the sort of woods that hunters might enjoy but a city fellow, hearing gunshots, isn’t going to appreciate. A character even mentions a lighthouse they can see. Do we see it? No. They could’ve shot this in Georgia like everybody else these days.

The writer-director’s determination to not give up her clues readily and not push the pacing makes for a slow, unsatisfying 82 minutes.  The friction never truly ignites into a blaze, and the dawdling way the story unfolds unwinds whatever tension might have arisen. “Five Nights” gives us only about two nights worth of movie, and far less to chew on than the stingy-with-story director would have us believe.

MPAA Rating: unrated, adult situations, profanity, alcohol consumption

Cast: David Oyelowo, Dianne Wiest, Rosie Perez, Hani Furstenberg
Credits: Written and directed by Maris Curran. A FilmRise release.

Running time: 1:22

If romantic comedies were easy, Hollywood would be churning them out like comic book adaptations. But they aren’t.

That magical blend of wit, warmth, chemistry and comedy evades pretty much everybody who sets out to make the perfect “date movie.” The droughts between good ones can last years.

So there’s no dishonor in taking a shot at the real L-word with “No Stranger Than Love.” It aims for the heart, but misses. It reaches for existential but never manages much more than “twee.”

This rom-com starts with great promise and a great premise. Lucy (Alison Brie of TV’s “Community”) is The Town Catch. Everybody, and I do mean EVERYbody pines for Miss Lucy.

One of her art students (Dylan Everett) at Spot Valley High is full of come-on anecdotes about how much older Josephine was than Napoleon. The principal at her school tugs her into a supply closet to propose that they run off to Uganda together.

A nerdy English teacher (Mark Forward) foists books on her and probably writes her poetry.

Even the town drunk (Paul Fateux) makes his pitch in the parking lot after school.

“When you see me from now on, could you look a little deeper?”

She’s the daughter of the mayor, three-time Queen of the Jamboree, so even the garbage men flirt with her and an over-eager cop is in the habit of pulling her twee baby blue Chevette over to ask for a date.

“It is against the law…to look THAT good!”

But it looks like Lucy has made her choice — in secret. That’s how she and Coach Clint Coburn (Colin Hanks) meet,  because he’s married. They may have something, though she’s a bit “frugal” about using the word “love.”

They’re just about to consummate when a huge hole opens in her living room floor and Clint drops into the dark void. They can talk, but she can’t see him and he has no idea what manner of limbo he’s tumbled into.

“No Stranger Than Love” doesn’t quite fall off a cliff with Clint, but almost. Interest fades as things turn predictable and dull.

Lucy takes off to find somebody who can keep a secret and give her a hand figuring this out and rescuing Clint from the abyss. And that’s where she meets the dark-jacketed, stubbled, I-Wear-My-Sunglasses-at-Night stranger, played by Justin Chatwin of TV’s “Shameless”. The new guy in town is looking for Clint.

Nothing that follows is the least bit interesting — not Lucy’s “girls’ group” confessional gabfests, not the stranger’s quest (he is smitten, too), not Lucy’s half-hearted search for the meaning of why a hole would open in the floor and take her would-be lover out of reach, not the search for the missing Clint nor Clint’s wife’s distress at what her husband might have been up to.

Brie doesn’t set off sparks with Hanks, which is exactly the point, and sets off even fewer with Chatwin, which isn’t.

Love the set-up, appreciate the nice dimensions Brie and screenwriter Steve Adams give Lucy in the film’s opening. But there’s precious little in the performance or the character’s inner life to justify a whole town’s love. Lust, maybe.

Lucy isn’t as desirable as she’s set up to be, the town “characters” aren’t particularly funny, and “No Stranger Than Love” just isn’t as  romantic or fantastical as the romantic fantasy it wants to be.

There’s a big hole in the middle of the movie, too.

MPAA Rating : R for language

Cast: Alison Brie, Justin Chatwin, Colin Hanks
Credits: Directed by Nick Wernham, script by Steve Adams. A Momentum/eOne release.

Running time: 1:27

Apparently, parents are a bit shrewder about reading reviews than weekend box office prognosticators thought.

Predictions that “The Angry Birds Movie” would earn a typical-for-3D animation $45 million on its opening weekend went by the wayside on Saturday, the most important day for family films for kids. “Angry Birds” fell off from a $44 million pace on set Friday to a $38 million pace by Saturday night. 

Will it fall off more Sunday? Word of mouth is a scary thing. As are negative reviews.

“Neighbors 2” will manage $22 million, a bit of a bump from yesterday’s projections. That’s some consolation for an R-rated comedy that had passable reviews, a proven brand and expectations of $35 million back in the halcyon days of say, Wed.

“The Nice Guys” has to be one of the biggest disappointments of the year. A funny, critically endorsed action comedy in the Shane Black “Lethal Weapon/48 Hours” mold, it will hit $11 million on its opening weekend. It didn’t reach a younger audience, and older audiences gave up on Russell Crowe a decade ago. It won’t have legs, because this isn’t “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.” Ouch.

Crowe should look for a TV detective show — on cable. Stick a fork in him. Done.

“Money Monster” is enjoying a solid second weekend. “Captain America” slips to #2, not bad after three weeks.

“The Lobster,” the first film from indie darlings A24 that I haven’t cared for, opened a little wider and is doing a robust $16,000 per screen. It’s not “Room” so the ceiling is low for this self-consciously obscure art film.

A bad weekend for any potential re-launch of Russell Crowe’s big screen career. That April “Saturday Night Live” bombing is followed by a somewhat over-rated, financially underwhelming “Nice Guys” opening weekend.

Great, or at least consistently positive reviews aren’t helping this violent action comedy get to $11 million, according to Deadline.com’s prognosis, based on Thursday night/all day Friday numbers. Wow. Predictions ranged in the $15-20 million range, thanks to the reviews, the laughs and Ryan Gosling. Nope. Warners’ gamble didn’t pay off. Nobody wants to go back to the Shane Black/Joel Silverman ’80s.

“The Angry Birds Movie” was the worst reviewed wide release to open this weekend, and it, being animated and in 3D, will clear $40 million. Parents may grimace and wished they’d read a review, but whatever. The high end of expectations was around $44, so that’s a win.

“Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising” shows that brand had less sequel value than Universal thought. Predictions that it might win the weekend, or hit the mid $30s, are down the drain. Thursday night put it on track to do well, Friday tamped down expectations. A $20 million weekend is the baseline, now. Maybe they’ll recover to $25 or so. Maybe.

“Captain America: Civil War,” the first summer movie and first blockbuster of the summer, has added another $33 million, or will have by midnight Sunday. Three weeks at number 1 didn’t quite happen.

“Zootopia” is still in the top ten after 12 weeks, $330 million richer.

But let’s start with “Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising” the sequel to the Seth Rogen/Rose Byrne fading hipster/stoner parents in revolt against their new frat bro neighbors.

Passable reviews were garnered for the sequel, which sets out to prove college girls can be just as rude, loud, vapid, stoned and over-sexed as college boys. It stumbles along, and reviews range from indifference to “Well, all right. If you have to.” It’ll make money, but the best bits are in the trailer. Whoops. Spoiler alert.

There’s a lovely, stupidly high approval number on Rotten Tomatoes for “The Nice Guys.” It’s a two hour long, hit-or-miss throwback action comedy with Russell Crowe in the Nick Nolte/Danny Glover role and Ryan Gosling as the cooler but goofy Eddie Murphy/Mel Gibson partner part.

Shane Black’s latest is all over the place. Russell Crowe doesn’t have to do anything funny, and doesn’t. There’s a too-smart-for-her-age kid, and an oddball villain and so on. Nothing we didn’t see on a weekly basis in the 80s and early 90s (“Last Boy Scout,” etc.). The metacritic rating is a lot closer to the mark on this one — subdued.

Anybody who endorsed “The Angry Birds Movie” is not to be trusted. Puerile, leaden, with a sinister subtext, I thought. Pans all around for that one. 

“Hard Sell” and “Almost Holy” are among the limited releases I got around to seeing this week. “Sell” is “Risky Business Lite” — cruder than the original, not funny. “Holy” is a disorganized but engrossing documentary about a Ukrainian preacher who saves homeless kids using threats, cajoling and brute force.

Nothing opening this weekend should challenge “Captain America,” right? Wrong.

Box Office Mojo figures “The Angry Birds” will seize the high ground at the box office. Mojo predicts a $43 to $36 margin for the “Birds” over the “Cap.” “Neighbors 2,” Mojo predicts, will be neck and neck for second with the Marvel movie.

Box Office Guru is leaning towards “Captain America: Civil War” holding on to $40 million worth of audience this weekend. Seems a tad generous.

“Birds” could clear $40, and would win the weekend. “Sorority Rising” could clear $35, and that would be good enough for second, I figure. “Civil War” mid$30s, tops.

Nobody is predicting big things for “The Nice Guys.” Thursday’s midnight shows were all about the frat bros and sorority…girls (“Neighbors”).

Ryan Gosling can’t open a blockbuster, and Russell Crowe hasn’t had a co-starring hit since, what, “Master and Commander”? Mid’teens for “Nice Guys,” maybe more if an older audience can be roused into showing up.

Warning signs that you may not have enough money to film a “heist” picture.

If the only place to set the “bank” your gang of actors is knocking over is the low-rent warehouse district. Where there would never be a bank branch.

If you can’t afford blanks for your firearms, and have to super-cheap it by digitally editing in muzzle flashes in post-production.

If the only “name” you can land for the cast is rocker-poet and-oh-by-the-way “actor” Henry Rollins.

“The Last Heist” steps up to the plate with those three strikes, and while Rollins doesn’t let down the side, it pretty much goes downhill from there. It’s an 84 minute walk-don’t-run-through of a thriller, a heist-splatter hybrid directed with no style and no urgency, attitudes the director imposes upon the unfortunate cast.

A gang of seven is stuffed into a white transit van. They’re parked in a neighborhood with no housing, no businesses, only warehouses. There’s a bank, with a “security” gate in front. And as they wait for their moment, they see the scariest pedestrian on Planet Earth in a place with NO pedestrians.

“Civilian,” they mutter. But that’s no civilian. That’s Henry Rollins, in black suit, black trench coat (in LA!), dark sunglasses and…dude, where did you get those SHOES?

He’s a bank customer. The branch is closing, and he has to close out his safety deposit box.

But no sooner has he started emptying that out, in the vault, than the gang bursts in wearing and frightens the two customers in the lobby, and the two bank employees. Only, not that much. Nobody looks frightened. The gang must have a calming effect. They don’t seem to be in much of a hurry, or have any sense of urgency at all about this.

And it’s not just about who they’re robbing.

The inevitable “You know who owns this place?” is answered with “Sure we do, that’s half the fun!”

The gang is a rainbow coalition of actors playing thugs — white, black, young, older, male and badass females (Kristina Klebe, Camilla Jackson). They’re code-named “Echo 1, Echo 2,” etc. But Paul (Torrance Combs), their leader, recognizes the assistant bank manager.

Off comes the mask, and Paul and Danny (Michael Aaron Milligan) bond like the long-lost-brothers they are.

The logic of that coincidence pales if you get hung up on his using their real names and taking his mask off…in front of HOSTAGES.

Thank heavens we’re redirected into the vault, where it turns out the preacher-like bank customer played by Rollins has a secret.

“I just need a moment of your time,” is but his introduction. He’s The Window Killer, a murderer who leaves his victims with their eyes gouged out. Guess where he stores those eyes.

The cops who mosey up to an expected armed robbery (Victoria Pratt is lead saunterer) don’t know that upon arrival.

So you’ve got a gang of bored armed robbers, trapped in a stand-off with bored cops, stuck with unafraid hostages inside a rambling, ventilation-shaft riddled “bank” with a knife-wielding serial killer.

Rollins makes what he can of this nutjob, cutting his victims, telling how long before they bleed to death, begging to know, “What’s it FEEL like?”

The rest of the cast take their queues from director Mike Mendez. It’s a movie that passes slowly, like a kidney stone. Even when he isn’t over-using slow-motion, it feels like we’re watching slo-mo. Mendez makes his living as a film editor. How? This isn’t a movie, it’s a still-life. Nervous energy and suspense can be supplemented in the editing. Not here.

The script is a cut-and-pasting of random thriller cliches and hoary thriller one-liners.

“You’re playing with the Big Boys, detective. This is how we roll!”

Sorry to get that mean, but gallons of blood and quarts of cliches later, we awaken for a finale that we’ve long since despaired of caring about. All this “heist” has stolen is our time.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with graphic violence and gallons and gallons of blood, and profanity

Cast: Henry Rollins, Torrance Combs, Victoria Pratt,John J. York, Faye DeWitt, Camilla Jackson,  Kristina Klebe
Credits: Directed by Mike Mendez, script by Guy Stevenson. An XLRator release.

Running time: 1:24

The totalitarianism of Tribalism is skewered without anesthetic in the darkly unpleasant satire “The Lobster,” a film about couples and loners and the ways they enforce their norms on others.

Then again, maybe not.

The latest obscure musings by Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos (“Dogtooth”) is full of shrewd observations about a world obsessed with everyone EVERYone’s relationship status and applies higher stakes to “We’re a couple” than modern society sanctions.

“The Lobster” is science fiction and social satire, and thanks to blood and bloodless choices, a pretty grim sit-through. Did I mention “unpleasant”? Yes? Just checking.

David, played by Colin Farrell at the pot-bellied onset of middle age, has just been dumped by his wife. That means he must go to this resort hotel in rural Ireland to meet someone new. He just must.

But this is a resort the same way “The Lord of the Flies” was an island vacation. Guests sit at a hundred tables-for-one until they find someone who will allow them to move to tables-for-two. They go to joyless mixers and have passionless sex with the staff as a way of preparing for couplehood.

And they compete with one another in daily dart-gun hunts for “loners,” with each “kill” adding a day to their 45 day stay, thus improving their odds.

Because the consequences of not coupling are dire. You choose an animal you’re content to spend the rest of yours days as upon arrival. Because that’s what they’ll transform you into if you fail. The loners, it is implied, already face this fate. That’s why the forests are populated with flamingos, camels, peacocks, wolves and rabbits. That’s why the world is overrun with cats and dogs.

That’s why David showed up with a lovely sheep dog. It was his brother. “He…didn’t make it.”

David has chosen “Lobster” as his spirit animal. Because “They can live 100 years, they stay fertile the entire time, and they have actual blue blood, just like royalty.”

We don’t have much hope for David. He’s painfully shy, fearful, even when he’s with his new posse, the lisping fellow guest (John C. Reilly) and the limping limp-wristed one (Ben Whishaw).

At least the limper is determined to find somebody, willing to do whatever it takes. David and the lisper seem lost before they begin.

It’s a world where every dismissal, every polite beg-off or rebuffed invitation to dance has life-or-death consequences. The sad “biscuit woman” (Ashley Jenson) lets her desperation and suicidal tendencies show.

The mixer dances, presided over by the singing couple in charge (Olivia Colman, James Finnegan) are like forlorn postcards of a long-faded romantic event. The punishments and humiliations for offenses like masturbation are excruciating, heartless and cruel, just like the hotel’s most “successful” hunter/guest (Angeliki Papoulia).

Which is why David flees and falls in with a gang of loners, led by the ruthless and just-as-cruel Loner Leader (Lea Seydoux).

The loners have their draconian rules, just like the totalitarian couplehood, where police check lone shoppers for their marital status. Loners in the woods cannot mate.

But in the woods with the loners is where David meets somebody just as short-sighted as he (Rachel Weisz, who narrates the story).

That’s one of the running digs of “The Lobster.” In this world, people are conditioned to look for superficial “compatibilities,” like a computer app. Got a limp? Find a woman with a limp. She gets nosebleeds? Better make sure you get them, too.

Every line sounds like something computer-written with all the feeling synthesized out of it.

“We dance alone. That’s why we only play electronic music.”

In spite of everything, David and his fellow short-sighted connect. Going through the motions of pretending to be in love (so that they can “pass” for a couple for excursions into the city) makes them fall in love. And the metaphor — love is short-sighted and can’t see all the way to an unhappy ending — is potent if obvious.

Farrell doesn’t give away much as David. But the Oscar-winning Weisz lets the lonely longing show behind her eyes. In the right role, she can be heartbreaking.

Seydoux is marvelously hateful, a lovely loner bent on breaking up the fascist-imposed couples.

Couples just starting out are assigned children to distract them from their problems with each other if they start fighting. The whole society is built upon misconceptions, traditions, what-must-be, like a theocracy or communist family planning state that imposes couplehood, procreation and “happiness” on one and all.

It’s all too droll and tinged with loveless sadism to go down easily, a “1984” for a loveless, disconnected but Facebook “connected” age.It hurts.

And that makes “The Lobster” more a movie that you appreciate and ponder than one you embrace and enjoy. Whatever its intellectual pretensions, I am looking forward to never seeing it again.

MPAA Rating:R for sexual content including dialogue, and some violence

Cast: Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, John C. Reilly, Léa Seydoux, Ben Whishaw, Jessica Barden
Credits: Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, script by Efthymis Filippou and Yorgos Lanthimos. An A24 release.

Running time: 1:58

Girls, parents may argue, are “twice as much trouble as boys.” So a movie about partying sorority sisters would have to offer double the trouble of one about frat bros.

That’s the logic behind “Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising.” It has to be twice as raunchy, exponentially more transgressive — crossing lines you just don’t see comedies cross — right?

It doesn’t. It’s got just about enough laughs, but there’s so much more that the Script by Committee wants to shoehorn in, like female empowerment, bad parenting passed off as “doing our best” just like our parents, gay marriage and the incredibly sexist college Greek system, a relic of the “Animal House” era that remains as “rapey” as ever.

“Neighbors 2” is a 92 minute comedy that plays like a two hour drag, a real check-your-cell-messages endurance test.

Mac and Kelly (Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne) have a toddler who loves playing with Kelly’s vibrator. Somehow, she’s not gotten her hand on Mac’s vast bong collection. Because whatever else these two have done, growing up themselves is not something they’ve mastered since “Neighbors.”

But Kelly’s pregnant again, or as Mac might put it, they’ve got a “little Jew in the oven.” Ahem. They find out when she vomits on him in the middle of intercourse.

They have a big house, but it’s time to get a bigger one. But things are afoot with the big, eight-bedroom monstrosity next door.

Shelby, Beth and Nora (Chloe Grace Moretz, Kiersey Clemons of “Dope” and Beanie Feldstein) meet each other as college misfits — unpopular girls turned off by the sexual salesmanship and second-class citizenship that sororities pass off as “sisterhood”(Selena Gomez leads the most popular one).

So the stoner Shelby (Moretz) and her pals resolve to start their own sorority, where young women have the same rights as frat bros. In other words, they can throw parties. Because sororities aren’t allowed to do that. Only fraternities. As Selena’s character snaps in the movie, “Google it.”

The “start our own” thing idea was stolen from an Amanda Bynes comedy, “Sydney White.” But never mind. Five credited writers can’t be expected to be original.

The stupid-high rent of the house forces the girls to enlist help. That’s where Teddy (Zac Efron), frat bro stuck in “quarter life crisis” and a Foot Locker job ever since college, comes in. He’ll mentor them. And have his revenge on Mac and Kelly.

He has a criminal record, thanks to them. He will “facilitate the act of partying in the house,” help them round up recruits who will pay the rent. “I just want to feel valued,” he says.

The “old people” are trying to sell their house. They’ve cluelessly nodded their way through the real-estate contract that put their house in escrow. They need the new owners not to see college coed chaos for 30 days. And the girls, just as childish, won’t cooperate. So they call the girls’ parents (Kelsey Grammer) to complain, and “It’s on.”

The “war” has a couple of funny battles — one involving a riot and chase as Mac and Kelly and their friends trying to steal the pot the girls want to sell to cover expenses.

Teddy, trying to find himself after his best-frat-bro (James Franco) gets engaged to another bro, switches sides.

Hilarious single-scene cameos score, with Grammer, Lisa Kudrow (snarky college chancellor) and Hannibal Buress (campus cop) landing laughs. The singing guy-to-guy engagement moment is adorable.

A sorority hazing ritual has the new girls dressed as (Universal’s) Minions, doing all the house chores. Cute.

Efron takes his shirt off, repeatedly, dances a striptease. Use it while it lasts, brother. The same goes for Rogen, whose plump, profane stoner act is wearing thin.

But the many random amusing moments are broken up by the girls’ questioning their values and the parents next door coming to grips with how bad they are at parenting. You just know “teachable moments” are on the way.

Director Nicholas Stoller puts WAY too much effort in “showing both sides,” and the girls aren’t remotely as funny or interesting as the alleged adults.

But maybe this movie will do some good. If “Animal House” brought generations back into the fraternities, “little sisters” of fraternities and sororities of America, maybe “Neighbors” will awaken the parents who write the checks to exactly the sort of warped system and even more warped values system (albeit, sometimes hilariously so) going Greek perpetuates.

Judging from such parents as Mac and Kelly, though, it’ll never happen.

MPAA Rating:R for crude sexual content including brief graphic nudity, language throughout, drug use and teen partying

Cast: Seth Rogen, Chloe Grace Moretz, Rose Byrne, Zac Efron, Kiersey Clemons, Lisa Kudrow
Credits: Directed by Nicholas Stoller, script by Andrew J. Cohen, Brendan O’Brien, Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Nicolas Stoller. A Universal release.

Running time: 1:32

Why, exactly? Dead horse and all.