Hall Pass
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Marriage and family responsibility are often punch lines at the butt end of jokes told in a smoke-filled poker room or over hot wings and beer. While there's a good amount of independent chest-thumping in a group of buddies, guys kid because they love. Maggie (Jenna Fischer) and Grace (Christina Applegate) put that to the test when they give their sex-obsessed man-child husbands a "hall pass" -- one week off from marriage, anything goes.
Rick (Owen Wilson) is the quintessential good guy, who occasionally notices other women and is egged on by his bad influence, best friend Fred (Jason Sudeikis). The 40-somethings are convinced they can get as many women as they did in their now romanticized college days. Their newfound freedom leads to predictable fish-out-of-water situations and plenty of cringe-inducing conversations with women who are half their age and out of their league.
Unfortunately, none of that translates into comedy, thanks to the lack of energy between Wilson and Sudeikis. Hall Pass directors Peter and Bobby Farrelly have made a career out of dimwitted pairings -- Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin, and Stuck on You -- but the Hall Pass co-stars read through their lines like they're at a script meeting. As director Kevin Smith once said, the money is in dick and fart jokes, and the Farrelly brothers follow that creed all the way to the bank. Other than an over-used Law and Order joke, the gross out gags are the few moments of laughter the film can cough up.
As Rick and Fred drag their feet by overeating, playing video games, and taking in rounds of golf, the pace of the film slows to a crawl. By the time the two luck out with a couple of hotties and put their loyalty to the test, the moral of the story is a fleeting whimper caught between talking genitalia and full-frontal male nudity. For Farrelly fans, the story just gets them to the next exploding diarrhea joke, but Hall Pass takes too long to get there. While Dumb and Dumber had clever one-liners -- "It's a cardigan but thanks for noticing" or "Samsonite! I was way off!" -- to fill the gaps in between absurd comic set pieces, Rick and Fred aren't idiots, they're children, and it's boring listening to them fantasize about sex.
Hall Pass's funniest moment comes during the sharp-witted, quickly cut montage of Rick and Fred's friend daydreaming about the trouble he could get into if given a week off from marriage. It is a hint of the comedy Hall Pass could have been if the Farrellys shaved off 20 minutes. While the promise of nudity and plenty of potty mouthed humor will be good enough for the teenage crowd, the rest of us should curb the marriage jokes and spend the night with our families -- kiddie humor isn't as funny as we remember it being.
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