Hall Pass Review

"Hall Pass"
Release Date: 02/25/2011
Directed by: Bobby Farrelly and Peter Farrelly
Screenplay by: Pete Jones, Kevin Barnett, Bobby Farrelly and Peter Farrelly
Rated R for crude and sexual humor throughout, language, some graphic nudity and drug use.
Review by: Sean Kayden

The Farrelly Brothers make their return to film after four years with “Hall Pass”. Rick (Owen Wilson) and Fred (Jason Sudeikis) play best friends who both have become a bit impatient with their wives. The two compadres eat, breathe, and think sex morning, noon, and night. Unfortunately, their wives do not. It’s the traditional case of a long-term marriage going south. It happens, I get it. After an embarrassing afternoon at a friend’s new home, Maggie (Jenna Fischer) and Grace (Christina Applegate) become completely fed up with their husband’s juvenile behavior. Dr. Lucy (Joy Behar), a kind of love-guru, suggests to the women to grant their husbands a hall pass. A “hall pass” is a week off from marriage to do whatever you want without consequences. At first, the proposition seems absurd, but with slight convincing each wife ultimately ends up conceding to this notion. After a slow start, I was anticipating for the flick to finally pick up some momentum and find it’s stride. Sadly, I was tripped up time and time again.

The days of “There’s Something About Mary” seem a lifetime ago. The Farrelly Brothers have yet to make any kind of indelible impression on me (and most audiences alike) since the late 90s. With a back catalogue of disappointments including, “Me, Myself & Irene”, “Shallow Hal”, “Stuck on You”, “Fever Pitch” and “The Heartbreak Kid”, I was hopeful and surprisingly optimistic that their grand return to raunchy, yet clever humor would be a victorious one. “Hall Pass” is exceptionally bland and misses the mark so often that I felt genuinely embarrassed to be sitting through this quagmire. Granted there were moments of fleeting laughs, although nothing on screen stuck emotionally. It was truly and painfully unmemorable in nearly every way. “Hall Pass” is like the new kid who walks into the wrong class on the first day of school, he’s mortified and knows he’s out of place. Anxiously anticipating something favorable, I sat deplorably watching every scenario unfold recklessly. It was out of sync right from the beginning and it had me thinking how one-time funny man Owen Wilson can’t catch a lucky break. His career is seeking into the vortex of impending doom. It almost makes you wonder if the guy himself actually even wanted to be there in the first place. SNL’s very own Jason Sudeikis has his quick displays of humor, but he was seeping into the trenches of career-suicide. As for the supporting women of the film, Fischer and Applegate felt utterly wasted and I know both of these women have superior comedic chops. Let’s not even get started on the forced toilet humor. Toilet humor will and always will be unnecessary, childish, and non-stylish. Come on guys, can’t you come up with new and clever gags than the same old, busted, recycled bullshit we’ve all seen how many times before? Oh, how the kings of comedy have mighty fallen.

Honest laughs were sporadic and short-lived in “Hall Pass”. What is even more discomforting, is discovering how it took four middle-aged men to write this garbage. At the box office, funny is money and apparently, it’s also a young man’s game too. This movie cluster of trite material is a very poor man's hybrid of “Wedding Crashers” and “The Hangover”. I hate to even speak of those films in the same breath as “Hall Pass”. In a weird way, it makes me appreciate those films ever more since realizing how much replay value they each possess. Frankly, it’s best to send the Farrelly Brothers’ latest baby, “Hall Pass” straight to summer school. Banal, blah, boring, it doesn’t make the passing grade.

Grade: 2 out of 5.

Published on March 5, 2011 by Mountain Views News.
http://mtnviewsnews.com/v05/htm/n10/p11.htm