Neighbors 2

Last year, I wrote the following headline for GLAAD’s annual study of LGBTQ representation in mainstream movies in 2015: “GLAAD Study Finds LGBT Representation In Hollywood Isn’t Getting Any Better.” I was hoping this year’s headline would reflect some improvement, yet almost nothing has changed.

We’ve got one of the biggest movies of the summer (or any summer!), with superheroes doing battle with each other instead of the bad guys, the sequel to one of the most popular comedies of the last decade, and Tilda Swinton and Ralph Fiennes in a steamy film about love and betrayal amongst a rock star and her friends.

Okay, so it was one of the worst summer movie seasons in recent memory. Trying to find the good blockbusters amongst the last four months releases sometimes felt like trying to find a needle in a stack of s---. But even this year there were diamonds in the rough. Today we’re celebrating the ten best, the summer movies of 2016 that didn’t make us weep for the future of cinema — and note that this list is just movies that got wide releases in at least 500 theaters. We’ll have a separate piece on under-the-radar summer films you might have missed next week on ScreenCrush. In the meantime, let’s celebrate the highlights from a depressing summer before we clear the decks and get ready for the fall.

I have a dream job. What could be better than watching and talking about movies for a living? Nothing; the answer is nothing. But lately my job has been a lot less fun than normal, because the movies themselves have been a lot less fun. Quite frankly, this summer sucks.

Someone had to dethrone Captain America: Civil War from its spot at the top of the box office top 10, so why not The Angry Birds Movie? The animated adaptation of the popular mobile game glided into first place with a fairly strong opening weekend, relegating Marvel’s latest adventure to second place.

Rose Byrne may have started off in dramatic roles on the big and small screen, but with Nick Stoller’s Get Him to the Greek and Paul Feig’s Bridesmaids, the Australian actress quickly established her comedic voice. The first Neighbors gave Byrne her funniest role yet in Kelly, a character who refreshingly challenged stereotypes of wives and mothers in major comedies. And in Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, Byrne reminds us once again why she should add more comedies to her resume.

Writing a comedy sequel that’s as good as, if not better than, the first movie is a rare achievement. But if there’s anyone who can do it, it’s Nick Stoller.

Despite how much of a refreshing surprise the first ‘Neighbors’ was, I’ll admit I wasn’t particularly looking forward to the sequel, which looked dispensable and derivative. The poster and trailer for ‘Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising’ made it clear that Nick Stoller’s sequel to the 2014 Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne comedy was simply replicating the original premise and gender-swapping it to raise the stakes. It seemed like the expected set-up for a movie to stereotype and villainize young women, ridicule and dumb them down for laughs, and subject them to dick jokes. But it turns out ‘Neighbors 2' is a more pleasant surprise than the first movie. Not only is it one of the best and funniest comedy sequels, but the most feminist, self-aware and gay-inclusive mainstream comedy of the year, if not ever.

Neighbors can suck. I’ve had terrible neighbors who vacuum at 1 o’clock in the morning, ones who fight with wooden bats in the hallway, and ones who decided it was a brilliant idea for their band to play a hardcore metal cover of Eminem’s ‘Lose Yourself.’ The scenarios for crappy neighbors are endless, which is good news for the new sequel to the Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne 2014 comedy.

Besides being hilarious, Neighbors never struck me as the kind of movie that needed a sequel. Frat moves in next store to family, they fight, they resolve, fin. But, Neighbors made so much money, there was no chance there wasn’t going to be a sequel, and now here we are...