Hall Pass (*½)
Directed by: Bobby & Peter Farrelly
Starring: Owen Wilson, Jason Sudeikis, Jenna Fischer, Christina
Applegate, Nicky Whelan, Richard Jenkins, Stephen Merchant, Larry Joe Campbell,
Bruce Thomas, Tyler Hoechlin, Alexandra Daddario
Seen: March 28th 2011
*½
Out of ****
After
the comedic success/impact of Dumb & Dumber; Kingpin; There’s Something
About Mary; Me, Myself & Irene and in more recent years the downward spiral
of Shallow Hal; Stuck on You and The Heartbreak Kid, the Farrelly Brothers are at
it again with Hall Pass. They were pretty much the pioneers of popular gross-out
comedy when There’s Something About Mary hit theatres in 1998, and they attempt
to continue down that vein with Hall Pass. Thing is, they seem to forget that for
the most part and end up telling a story attempting more of a stab at heart and
truth than their previous works. But then every now and then, it appears, they
remember that they are indeed the Farrelly Brothers, and they need to “plug” in
some profanity or rudeness or completely off the wall crack at humour, and these
moments mostly come off as extremely tasteless punctuation marks in an utterly
boring movie. Maybe this can all be put down to the fact that they are both
over 50 now, and don’t think like immature students anymore, however much they’d
like to think so.
Rick (Wilson) and Fred (Sudeikis) are friends who have both been
married for quite some time, Rick to Maggie (Fischer) with three kids, Fred to
Grace (Applegate) with no kids. Both are mostly responsible husbands but their
conversations leaves little to the imagination and when their wives overhear a
particularly seedy chat between the two first Maggie and then Grace act upon
advice received from a friend, and they give their husbands a Hall Pass, one
week off from marriage where whatever they do will carry no consequence. To start
off with the two see it as a golden opportunity, but they learn soon enough, as
their friends start deserting them on their “adventure”, that things have
changed and they’re not students anymore. The days of the Hall Pass are
depicted in a perfunctory style as time progresses, and in this short chapter-like
presentation one of the very few real laughs of the movie can be found: as Day
4 is indicated, the two are shown lying in bed with hangovers for a few
seconds, and Day 5 immediately follows.
The humour is extremely flat and recycled Farrelly Brothers’ type fare,
and the story itself is not strong enough to hold it up, as the two actually
compete against, the attempts at comedy leaning towards the no-holds-barred
college attitude and the story leaning more towards an old-fashioned (but very
much camouflaged) love story between the two couples. Owen Wilson is Owen
Wilson as he’s always been, just a bit “older and slower”, and Jason Sudeikis
reminds of Ed Helms in The Hangover, just not as good. Christina Applegate and
Jenna Fischer could be any two actresses, as they really only fill out the
movie until the focus returns to the guys. The supporting cast is forgettable; they
are almost exclusively used as negligible comedy fillers, replaced with new
supporting cast members every now and then. Richard Jenkins oscillates between serious and
ridiculous characters in his movies, and here he again falls into the
ridiculous and nonsensical category.
Hall Pass is rarely funny with odd moments of uncomfortable attempts
at gross-out comedy while the actual story is much too light and ineffectively
told to bypass the lame and crude attempts at humour. I would recommend missing
this movie…
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