Post-Disney, it was time to get serious. With consistent top billing, there was period drama Me and Orson Welles, Nicholas Sparks' war romance The Lucky One (in which lovers were sweetly tethered by… interventionist American foreign policy), the lachrymose Charlie St. Cloud, and the more explicit The Paperboy. Simply never turning in a bad performance, he also did the most with limited scripts – see the meagre That Awkward Moment, and We Are Your Friends, a distinctly 2015 schematic on EDM's liberating power and meditation on millennials resisting their generation’s assigned fait accompli of debt, hustling as self-starter disruptors in the Valley (Efron had heart as the central master of decks).
Then, crucially, it was time to get silly. The mid-2010s marked a transition point. Some suggested he was on a downward trajectory, playing limbo with low-brow projects, but dismissing the power of the ribald studio comedy is a naïve, fatuous move – think of all-time great Robert de Niro, post-Meet the Parents, embracing fun and accessing a whole new creative reserve as a result.
In the Neighbours movies, Efron played a profoundly immature, insecure, and riotous frat bro. He brought subtlety to the crude cracks, a Midas touch to even the cheapest riff on erectile dysfunction. There is a delicate art to overkilling bong jokes and still being charming. With inspired expressions as Himbo Supreme, he became an auteur of airheads with every incorrect use of air quotes, scoffing retort, and glorious Buster Keaton-meets-Jackass feat of physical comedy. When Seth Rogen is cartoonishly grunting away, you have Efron, the unsuspecting comedic subject, statuesque, stealing the show with an eyebrow raise and a nonplussed cocked head.
