Neighbors is, without a doubt, the worst film I have ever seen in my entire life - and yet, it's awful in such a particular, peculiar way that it's almost worth seeing anyhow. This film is terrible, but unlike your average, run-of-the-mill bad film, this one is actually fascinating. I saw it on TV late one night and I was absolutely mesmerized. Usually, when a movie doesn't work, you can at least see what the filmmakers had in mind, and then can assess where it went wrong (weak concept, poor script, actors weren't the right ones for the roles, etc.). But here, I have no idea - I mean absolutely NO IDEA - what the makers of the film were going for in the first place. I mean, ok, John Belushi is this very repressed and conservative guy and these "wacky" neighbors move in next door and shake his life up. So you know the film's after some sort of dark vision. But the neighbors' wackiness is without context - they just perpetrate one unlikely act after another (usually some kind of sadistic prank on Belushi) for no real reason and to no ultimate goal. There's no real internal consistency to the way any of the characters behave, so you're never on any firm ground in knowing either what's going to happen next - or in caring about it anyway. Watching this movie is like watching a car wreck - and then seeing the people involved get back into their vehicles, start them up, and proceed to wreck into each other again and again, for ninety minutes. It's so absurd. Just when you think the film can't get any worse - more cruel or pointless - it does. Again and again, for ninety minutes, it keeps one-upping itself in dreadfulness
I have my own special theory about this film. I maintain that it wasn't made to entertain at all. It was made with the specific intent of having its financial backers sweat bullets and squirm in their seats. I can just see Belushi and Aykroyd as they watched the suits at the studio viewing the final cut of this movie for the first time, giggling proudly to themselves and saying "Ha! I dare you guys to actually try and market this piece of s***!" And, I have to say, when I imagine the movie in that context, it does make me laugh - because it has been so thoroughly devised so as to appeal to absolutely nobody! It is purely bad through and through, and whenever something even threatens to get interesting or to make sense, the film zigs off in yet another truly awful direction. As such, it achieves a purity of badness which is totally unique.
Since first seeing it, I have turned some of my friends on to this movie, and amongst ourselves we have devised a new film rating. If a movie is just bad, that's one thing - but if it's 'Neighbors'Bad, then it's something entirely different. A movie that's Neighbors bad is one which looks like it's actually working harder to be awful than it is to be good (and I'm excluding purposefully "camp" films here) - one whose plot is almost indecipherable, whose events and characterizations are completely random, and again and again frustrates any expectation at arriving at any sort of meaningful conclusion, even a silly one. Not many films like this exist (thankfully), making Neighbors, at least for me, a bizarre and perverse sort of pleasure.
If any of the foregoing analysis makes sense to you or strikes any kind of chord, you may want to check Neighbors out just for the novelty of it; for certain, it will be one of the most singular movie experiences you'll ever have. But if you do so, for God's sake make sure you have a legitimately good movie ready to put in right afterward - believe me, after seeing Neighbors, you'll need it!
