Hall Pass
Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis are best friends. They are each married, although Wilson's union with Jenna Fischer is presented in a much more positive light that Sudeikis' ball and chain, Christina Applegate. We get the usual stuff about pussy-whipped guys, who look back with rose-colored glasses at their single days and bemoan that they could be getting all sorts of poon-tang if they just weren't married.
Fischer and Applegate take the advice of a psychologist friend and give them a "hall pass"--one week that does not have any marital restrictions. The thinking is that the obsession with sex, now denied to them, will dissipate once it becomes easily available.
Of course Wilson and Sudeikis are hapless when it comes to meeting women. We get a lot of obvious and feeble jokes, like them going to Applebee's to meet women, or using pick-up lines about the size of their penises. The movie loses whatever good will it has with me when this kind of humor is employed--as a man, I realize that we can be stupid, but this is ridiculous. It's the reason why I hate all those beer commercials that portray men in the same light.
Of course the two will have disastrous luck in scoring, while Fischer and Applegate are both tempted in their absence (I really like Fischer as a presence, whether in her role on The Office or in the films I've seen her in--she's instantly likable). Wilson eventually, despite himself, woos an extremely hot barista (Nicky Whelan), but we all know what he will finally decide, even as Whelan is exposing her perfect breasts to him.
The Farrellys still have a bit of their naughty selves at work here, such as having a prolonged look at an extremely large penis, but otherwise there are no appearances by semen or any other liquid associated with sex. There are gags about cunnilingus and the correlation between sagging breasts and the size of the vaginal opening, but they are tired and expressed without enthusiasm. A scene in which they eat pot brownies on a golf course is embarrassingly bad.
I didn't hate Hall Pass, but I didn't much like it, either.
The Farrelly brothers have been mellowing for years - what you say about this film could easily be applied to 2003's 'Stuck on You'.
ReplyDeleteIt's a real pity that they've gone this way because as crude as it was at times, 'Dumb and Dumber' was one of the funniest films I've seen of the past 20 years and 'Kingpin' (haven't seen in a long time) was an underrated followup.
But ever since the success of 'There's something about Mary' (overrated imo) all their films seen to be aggressively hyped up as their best since TSAM, only to fall flat with the public and critics.