Warning: Spoilers!
Watching "Neighbors 2" was interesting and had its funny moments, but it is not as if I am going to watch it 10-hundred times until I know every line. As a general moviegoer, I liked it enough, and watching it was fun with my friends, but as a sorority sister, it was not the best movie in portraying an accurate image of what a sisterhood is really like. I am not a part of an independent sorority so maybe there are a few differences in how things are done. It is just that the entire motive of the girls is having the right to party because regular sororities are not allowed to throw parties in their houses (which does kind of suck). Looking at the frat party in the beginning of the movie and the shady nature of it all then, yeah, having a place away from that is not degrading, it is important. There are a lot of things I do have to say about this movie, for example: how the movie portrayed the girls when something went wrong, thinking there are no rules in college (you are an adult with responsibilities away from home), Greek life inaccuracies and acts of criminal behavior—like robbing a house—were negative aspects that incorrectly portrayed what real sisterhood is about. However, the thing that got me the most was at the end when the girls decide to throw a party that had to do with everything they despised and frowned upon in the beginning of the film. They decided to put aside their morals that started their sisterhood/friendship in order to get money to rent their house.
I may be overthinking it, but we should never comprise our values, especially if it creates the image you did not want in the first place. The point of their sisterhood and empowerment, or whatever they had, went out the window by the end of the movie. This happens not only in movie sororities or real sororities, but in real life situations that concern the choice between doing the right thing and doing something you hate to meet someone else's expectations. People work jobs they hate all the time in order to make the money they need. In some cases, like the movie, an opportunity to turn it all around can happen, but there is a reality of those decisions that has to be made in and out of college life. It is not easy when tough choices are meant to be made, but I do not think your morals should be comprised. In the case of the movie, they should not have thrown the shady party because it is not what they were about, and they could've found other means of making money by being the creative women they were.
It also seems the movie is trying to display the theme of growing up and figuring out who you really are. It applies to Teddy and to the sisters because they seem lost in the college haze. Friendship is what drove the freshman together and created a space for them, and Teddy feels lost with his friends moving on with their lives as he is stuck in the same place. College life and postgraduate life can be tough without someone there, because reality can strike (especially in the form of student loans). The girls, for the most part, figure out who they really are through their sisterhood and what they stand for, which I guess is some growth considering their childish behavior during the film. Teddy grows from his immature behavior after hanging out with Mac and Kelly and finding where he fits. Mac and Kelly even grow as parents and place a deeper value in spending the time they have with their kids before they grow up. This all seems thoughtful for a movie that has a clown that scared the shit out of people, weed schemes and realtors trying to be "dope."
