Jerrod Carmichael | Through the Shattered Lens

So, I’m just going to be honest here.

I did watch Transformers: The Last Knight. I didn’t see it at the theaters, of course. To date, I’ve only seen one Transformers movie on the big screen. It was the fourth one and not only did I get motion sick but when I left the theater, I discovered that I was having trouble hearing. Even though I watched Transformers: The Last Knight on a small screen, I still made sure to take some Dramamine beforehand. That may have been a mistake because this movie somehow drags things out for 2 hours and 30 minutes. That’s a lot of time to spend trying to stay awake while watching something that doesn’t even try to make sense.

So, yes, I did watch Transformers: The Last Knight but I’m not really sure what I watched. I know that there was a lot of camera movement. There was a lot of stuff blowing up. Robots would fly into space. Robots would return to Earth. Robots turned into cars. All of the robots spoke in these gravelly voices and half the time, I couldn’t really understand what they were saying. Mark Wahlberg was around and he spent the entire movie with this kind of confused look on his face. His Boston accent really came out whenever he had to deliver his dialogue. One thing I’ve noticed about Wahlberg is that the less he cares about a movie, the more likely he is to go full Boston. To be honest, if I just closed my eyes and listened to Wahlberg’s accent and tuned out all of the explosions and robot talk, I probably would have thought I was watching Manchester By The Sea.

Anthony Hopkins was also in the movie, playing a character who might as well have just been named “Esteemed British Person.” It’s always fun to see Hopkins in a bad movie, just because he knows that his deserved reputation for being a great actor isn’t going to suffer no matter how much crap he appears in. He always goes through these movies with a slightly bemused smirk on his face. It’s almost as if he’s looking out at the audience and saying, “Laugh all you want. I’ll still kick anyone’s ass when it comes to Shakespeare…” Anyway, Hopkins is mostly around so that he can reveal that the Transformers have been on Earth since time began. Why, they even saved King Arthur!

The plot has to do with a powerful staff that can be used to bring life back to the Transformers’s home planet. The problem is that using the staff will also destroy all life on Earth or something like that. So, of course, the good Transformers are trying to save Earth and the bad Transformers are like, “Fuck Earth, let’s blow stuff up.” Or something like that. The main good Transformer — Optimus Prime, I guess — gets brainwashed into becoming an evil Transformer. Of course, since Anthony Hopkins is in the movie, the majority of the film takes place in England and that can only mean a trip to Stonehenge!

And…

Look, I’ve exhausted myself. I’m not going to say that Transformers: The Last Knight is a terrible movie because, obviously, someone out there loves this stuff. I mean, they’ve made five of these movies so someone has to be looking forward to them. They’re not for me, though.

Some day, I hope Micheal Bay directs a Fifty Shades of Grey movie. I look forward to watching Christian and Ana discuss consent while the world explodes behind them.

(For the past three weeks, Lisa Marie has been in the process of reviewing 56 back to school films! She’s promised the rest of the TSL staff that this project will finally wrap up by the end of today, so that she can devote her time to helping to prepare the site for its annual October horrorthon! Will she make it or will she fail, lose her administrator privileges, and end up writing listicles for Buzzfeed? Keep reading the site to find out!)

How many times can the same thing keep happening to the same people?

That’s a question that you may be tempted to ask yourself while watching Neighbors 2. Neighbors 2 is, of course, a sequel to the original Neighbors. In the first film, Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne played Mac and Kelly Radner, a married couple who are struggling to deal with the fact that, as new parents, they are now officially adults. When a crazy and wild fraternity moves in next door to them and refuses to tone down their partying ways, Mac and Kelly are forced to take matters into their own hands. Occasionally hilarious mayhem ensues.

In Neighbors 2, Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne again play Mac and Kelly Radner, a married couple who are struggling to deal with the fact that, as parents who are awaiting the arrival of their 2nd child, they are now officially adults and may have to finally move into a more family friendly house in the suburbs. When a crazy and wild ~~fraternity~~ sorority moves in next door to them and refuses to tone down their partying ways, Mac and Kelly are forced to take matters into their own hands. Occasionally hilarious mayhem ensues.

Yeah, it’s all pretty familiar. Not only are many of the same jokes from the first film repeated but they’re often repeated at that exact same spot in which they originally appeared. To the film’s credit, it does occasionally acknowledge that it’s repeating itself, though it never quite reaches the self-aware heights of something like 22 Jump Street. Even Zac Efron returns and, again, he is initially the Radner’s enemy before eventually becoming their ally.

That said, the familiarity is not necessarily a bad thing. Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne both know how to get laughs, even when they’re telling the same joke that they told a year ago. Zac Efron tends to try too hard whenever he has a dramatic role (like in The Paperboy, for instance) but he’s got a real talent for comedy.

Ultimately, though, the best thing that saves Neighbors 2 from just being a forgettable comedy sequel is the sorority. As opposed to the first film’s creepy fraternity, the sorority in Neighbors 2 is partying for a cause greater than just hedonism. Shelby (Chloe Grace Moretz, finally getting to have fun in a movie) starts her independent sorority in response to being told that official sororities are not allowed to throw parties and, instead, can only attend misogynistic frat parties. When Shelby and her sorority buy the house, it’s not just to make trouble. It’s because they need a place where they can have a good time without feeling that they’re in constant danger from drunk and perverted frat boys. A subtext of empowerment through partying runs through Neighbors 2 and it elevates the entire film.

Neighbors 2 is an entertaining film, even if it never leaves as much of an impression as you may hope. (I have to admit that, whenever I try to list all the films that I’ve seen this year, Neighbors 2 is one of those that I often have to struggle to remember.) That said, it’s not a terrible way to spend 97 minutes and it’ll make you laugh. And, ultimately, that really is the most important thing when it comes to comedy.

As for the question of how often can the same thing happen to the same person…

Well, I guess we’ll have to wait for Neighbors 3 to get our answer!