I really liked Men, but Neighbors goes several steps further in sheer unpleasantness. Of the 6 main characters, two are downright unredeemably evil, one is a nattering idiot, and the other three, who are supposed to be "nice," wind up looking weak and naive. Basically, I wanted to punch Jason Patric and Catherine Keener (the two evil ones) in the teeth, and I wanted to slap some sense into the rest (oh, and put a gag on Ben Stiller, who never for one second SHUT UP the entire time he was on screen). Oh, and speaking of wanting to punch someone, this stinky guy who I swear was mentally unbalanced came in a few minutes into the movie, sat in front of us, and loudly whispered to us, "Did this just start?" Like, how about you look at the start time, look at your watch, and then do the math, Einstein? But it got worse: he was one of those people who like to project their laughs to the cheap seats -- in the theater across the hall -- plus he began talking to the film (e.g. "What did you expect, you stupid bitch?"). Ohhhh, what I wouldn't give to be Carrie for just one minute...
Oh, right, the movie. Anyway, as you all know, I'm usually not averse to talky movies, but this one just goes overboard -- it reminded me of recent Woody Allen movies where I cower in pain and pray for him to just shut up long enough for me to drink myself into a stupor. The dialogue is clever and engaging at first (as are the performances), but it NEVER changes -- they're always rehashing the same things in the same words -- and it gets grating and unbearable. Not that I'm promoting those sappy, "a very special episode," moralistic movies, but when the end of the film comes and not one of the characters has changed in any way, it sort of makes you wonder what the point of the movie was.
My date said he'd rather watch evil but interesting characters than good but boring ones; I concur, but these were evil AND boring people. And for a talky movie, the dialogue just wasn't clever or energetic enough to stand up for the whole 2 hours.
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