Nicholas Stoller may not be a household name, but you are familiar with his movies. Neighbors, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and now Bros are some of the biggest mainstream comedies of the last 20 years, and Stoller is the director and writer behind these movies.
Like so many comedic talents over the last couple of decades, Stoller got his start in the Judd Apatow universe, working as a writer on the short-lived Jay Baruchel vehicle, Undeclared. From there he moved to writing and directing, and it wasn’t long before he burst onto the scene with 2008’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall. The smash hit catapulted Stoller into stardom, making him an extremely in-demand director and writer.
Since that time, he has had a successful career as a major-studio comedic writer and director, something more and more rare in today’s Hollywood landscape. He even moved back into television, creating the successful Netflix comedy, Friends From College, starring Keegan-Michael Key and Cobie Smulders. As people head to theaters everywhere to check out his latest film, Bros, we decided to rank his movies from worst to best.
7. Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (2016)
Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising is a prime example of too much of a good thing, which is why it falls so low on our list. While you’ll find its predecessor much higher on the countdown, this movie feels spread a little too thin for its own good. Sure, there’s still some quality gags here, but the whole thing is a little pasted together.
Sorority Rising follows much the same blueprint as the first, except this time gender swapping a sorority in place of your typical fraternity and welcoming Chloe Grace Moritz as the big bad to be brought down by Rogen, Efron, and Byrne. You can no doubt do worse than this harmless comedy, but you could also just watch the first one again if you are really in the mood. That being said, audiences turned out in droves to see the sequel, with the movie making over a hundred million dollars at the box office.
6. Storks (2016)
Do parents still tell their children that storks are responsible for delivering babies? This is a question I asked myself when considering this film though, to be honest, I’m not sure it really matters all that much.
Storks tells the absurd and surprisingly complicated story of the titular birds and their current situation, which does not involve delivering babies as in the old days. They now work at some kind of imagined dot com/Amazon stand-in that delivers everything. It’s a strange set up that genuinely stretches any sort of logic to its breaking point. That said, it mostly doesn’t matter as everything is really only leading to a very typical movie we will recognize.
The focus eventually falls on a stork named Junior, played by Andy Sandberg, and a human named Tulip, played by newcomer Katie Crown. The two are tasked with the oldest job in the Stork handbook, delivering children to their families. They face plenty of obstacles along the way, but they learn plenty, too. It’s formulaic, sure, but all animated movies this side of Pixar Studios often are. Stoller does, however, inject enough of his humor and sensibility into Storks to make it worth your while.
5. The Five-Year Engagement (2012)
The Five-Year Engagement brings Stoller and actor/writer Jason Segel back together for the second time after the success of Forgetting Sarah Marshall. This time the two take an earnest and heartfelt approach to the romantic-comedy genre, excising some of the more crass humor of the proceeding picture for something closer to genuine romance.
Starring both Siegel and Emily Blunt, The Five-year Engagement tells the story of a couple who are constantly putting their marriage aside for each other’s professional lives. Blunt’s Violet is a PhD graduate with an opportunity to enter a post-graduate psychology program at The University of Michigan while Segel’s Tom is a sous-chef with dreams of owning his own restaurant. As we well know, good relationships often rely on compromise, and dreams are often put on hold, and their marriage continues to become indefinitely delayed.
Though this movie did not do very well at the box office, critics found Segel and Blunt’s chemistry quite charming, enough so to make this a worthy entry into the romantic-comedy canon.
4. Get Him To The Greek (2010)
Even in the age of IP, where seemingly every movie gives birth to five more, this is one of the oddest sequels of all time. So much so, that you might not even recognize it as a sequel, but it is, in fact, the sequel to Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Namely it is a continuation of Russell Brand’s Aldous Snow.
Odder still is the fact that Jonah Hill appears in both movies playing two different parts. Here he plays Aaron Green, a man tasked with getting Snow to the titular Greek Theater in Los Angeles by way of New York City. The rub is that Snow has decidedly fallen off the wagon, making for a drug-fueled trip to say the least. Brand’s turn as the main star of the film doesn’t work quite as well as his supporting role in the previous entry, but there is still plenty to like here as he and Hill certainly have comedic chemistry. Audiences at the time seemed to agree, as the movie’s box office results did well but not quite as well as Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
3. Bros (2022)
Aside from being the newest entry into Stoller’s filmography, Bros is also the first mainstream Hollywood studio-backed rom-com to feature gay men as the leads. It’s a notable accomplishment, to be sure, but ultimately the movie is going to be judged on whether or not it works as a narrative feature, regardless of any outside forces. In that, Bros is a bit of a mixed bag.
Co-written and starring Billy Eichner, Bros tells the story of a burgeoning love affair between his character, Bobby, and Aaron (Luke Macfarlane). It’s a film that follow many of the beats you might expect from a romantic comedy, with an obvious difference being the queer relationship at its center. If anything about Bros stands out, it is Eichner’s successful turn as a leading man in a major Hollywood movie. Eichner is fairly well known, but mostly for his man-on-the-street-style Youtube comedy and not so much for his acting. He changes that here, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him become a significant star going forward.
2. Neighbors (2013)
Neighbors is noteworthy for being one of the raunchier comedies Stoller has ever made, falling more in line with the pure Apatow brand than some of his other movies. It stars Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne as new parents who unwittingly move next door to a frat house. It’s in that house, and with frat brothers Zack Efron and Dave Franco, that most of the movie’s action occurs.
You can imagine the kinds of party scenes that transpire, making Neighbors a worthy addition in college party canon. There is, however, a certain amount of pathos and heart as well—at least more than you might expect from the set-up. As the movie progresses, we learn that both Rogen and, surprisingly, Efron, are both fairly unhappy with their current lives. The former, of course, wishes he was still living the kind of carefree life that parenthood does not allow. Efron, too, feels stifled, growing tired of his hedonistic lifestyle. In a way, the two see the other’s life as the answer, though of course it isn’t all that simple. This is where Stoller displays his impressive ability to balance heart and hilarity, something he does throughout his filmography.
1. Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)
Though this movie is actually Stoller’s debut film, it is without a doubt the gold standard to which all his other movie’s must try to live up to. Starring Freaks and Geeks alum Segel as a recently dumped Peter Bretter, Forgetting Sarah Marshall finds catharsis in both heartache and hilarity. It forms an intriguing love square between Segel, Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, and Russell Brand. Add in the incredible Hawaiian scenery and cameos from the likes of Bill Hader, Jonah Hill, and countless others, and you have one of the best romantic comedies of the last 20 years.
It’s a film that works so well and is so incredibly rewatchable that scenes and moments seem to pop up all the time. I will never again eat a meal alone in a restaurant without thinking of Hill’s devastating takedown of Segel, asking him politely, but with plenty of snark, whether he might like a book to keep him company during his lonely dinner. Stoller has made several good-to-great movies in his career and will no doubt continue to make them for years to come, but Forgetting Sarah Marshall remains his best.