Sequels are an inevitability when a film does well ($270 million worldwide off an $18 million budget in this case) and point to this as emblematic of a timid, gun-shy Hollywood if you will, but hey: it’s an original property, so count your blessings. And besides, I never saw the first one, so it’s all gravy for me. Maybe this is a valuable experiment in whether a comedy sequel can stand on its own feet without your foreknowledge, or maybe I’m just derelict in my duty, but either way you can judge a comedy without relying on too much nuance: does it make you laugh or not? Fortunately, I made notes. Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne’s Mac and Kelly are now selling their house and need 30 days without disruption during the Escrow period (a concept mercifully explained for international audiences by their estate agent: it’s a sort of financial limbo before properties are formally exchanged). But the next-door house formerly occupied by the fraternity is now home to Chloe Grace Moretz’s sorority, Kappa Nu, so here we go again. Zac Efron’s Teddy, now directionless in a post-college funk, returns to lend mainly shirtless support as the inside man. Now this makes you love the face off Moretz, but it unbalances the whole thing, because next door Mac and Kelly, on whose side you’re largely supposed to be, are busy doing some fairly shoddy parenting. There are a lot of good jokes here: their daughter plays with a dildo which they keep explaining away as a cartoon character; they constantly swear in front of her; Mac is – inevitably – a stoner, but no effort is made to explain this away as the forgivable result of tiredness or existential angst. Neither seems motivated in life beyond the typical autopilot ladder-climbing of suburban capitalism: get a job, any job, try and keep it, have a kid, buy a bigger house. As far as their being able to move house without complication goes, sure, they’ve earned it – but it doesn’t make them the sort of characters for whom we’ll root for that to happen. None of their actions in isolation makes them bad people; they’re just carelessly drawn for protagonists. Despite a weirdly low-key ending you rarely see in comedies (no big house-down joke or sequel hint as a closer), you leave happy and with the sense that Nicholas Stoller deserves a pat on the back for taking the path less trodden. The imbalance created by some poor choices around the principal characters is just about made up for by some big plus points both comic and socially relevant, so you might as well pledge and go with it.