HAVING neighbours over can often be a strangely stressful experience.
It seems like a good idea to get to know them but if it doesn’t go well, you’ll have to avoid them in the future. And if it does, they might start asking you to meet all the time.
It is the set-up for this hilarious and often excruciating comedy-drama about two sets of very different couples who happen to live in the same building.
With events taking place in one apartment over an evening, we meet unhappily married, anxiety-ridden wannabe interior designer Angela (Olivia Wilde) and Joe (Seth Rogen), a failed musician with a bad back.
They have a child, who is away for the night, and a beautifully renovated flat Angela longs to show off, but has had no opportunity as they “have no friends”.
Much to Joe’s horror, she’s invited their stylish neighbours, Pina (Penelope Cruz), a therapist, and Hawk (Edward Norton), a former firefighter, over for dinner.
She knows little about the couple apart from that they have very loud, and very regular, sex.
Something Joe wants to bring up at the dinner so he can ask them to keep the noise down, which horrifies Angela.
From the moment the four are together it is clear the couples couldn’t be more different from each other.
While Pina and Hawk touch, kiss and listen to each other when they speak, Angela and Joe are snide and sarcastic to each other.
Soon, a spliff and some tequila relax everyone a little, and the conversation opens up to more intimate pursuits.
The invite becomes clear — Pina and Hawk want to help their neighbours’ sex lives by inviting them to a group sex session.
This is laugh-out-loud funny and almost unbearably embarrassing.
Screenwriters Rashida Jones and Will McCormack updated it from the Spanish stage play The People Upstairs and preserve the live theatre flow.
The fact it’s directed by Olivia Wilde — who also directed the brilliant Booksmart and Don’t Worry Darling — makes it an even more incredible piece of work, as she’s in nearly every scene.
But Cruz is the standout star — no mean feat.
Her performance as the stute and sexy therapist with a language barrier is comic brilliance.
One to watch . . . but maybe not on a date night.
THIS latest loony chapter in the Despicable Me film franchise delivers its best adventure yet.
Old-school Hollywood and a host of new characters make for a superb, very watchable story arc.
Narrated by a movie museum tour guide (Allison Janney), she tells her group about the origins of Hollywood: Two Minions, Henry and James.
We see them serving a range of evildoers, repeatedly causing each one’s demise through their clumsiness and desire to please.
An early gag with a furious giant stepping on a piece of Lego sets the tone for hilarious slapstick that follows the breakout Minions Henry and James.
They are aspiring filmmakers, who head to 1920s Hollywood.
These scenes are a spectacle – so full of background detail and action that you wish some could be slowed down to absorb every element.
The rest of the Minions go in search of a new evil master to serve, finding an emotionally robust robot with a feminist girlfriend.
There are plenty of grown-up jokes that will have adults laughing, while the franchise still delivers all its classic kooky craziness for children.
COMEDIANS Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol started their low-budget web series Nirvanna The Band in 2007.
That became a TV show ten years later and has now been developed into this brilliantly mad movie.
The Toronto-based mix of breathtaking pranks and warm, nostalgic comedy starts with footage of the duo in 2008.
They are putting up fliers for their band with grandiose ideas and say with confidence: “What you’re about to see is something you’ve never seen before.”
Fast-forward 18 years and aspirations for their musical careers haven’t changed, but their energy is waning.
They still desperately want a gig.
But instead of just ringing a venue, they create a convoluted plan that leads to a nail-biting sequence at the top of Toronto’s CN Tower, and create a time machine from a camper van and soda.
Johnson, who directed the brilliant Blackberry in 2023, brings his kooky, fly-on-the-wall style to this film, which has sprinkles of Borat and Jackass but with more heart.
You will be researching how they pull off the scenes where they interact with their younger selves.
The funniest friendship on the big screen in years.