Directed by: Bobby Farrelly & Peter Farrelly
Written by: Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly, Pete Jones, Kevin Barnett
Starring: Owen Wilson, Jason Sudeikis, Jenna Fischer, Richard Jenkins, Christina Applegate
Rating: [2.5/5]
When in a relationship for a long time you forget the fundamentals of how operating the world as a single person works. You can be easily seduced by all of the freedom but can forget all of the cons that come with it. Hall Pass presents two married men with the opportunity to be temporarily single men once again delivering a middling and ultimately forgettable story.
Both existing in stagnant marriages, Rick (Owen Wilson) and Fred (Jason Sudeikis) receive what they believe to be a golden ticket in receiving a hall pass from their wives, which allows them to get their sexual frustration over with and sleep with other women. Something they see as an awesome opportunity but find it a bit more difficult to cash in than they thought.
The phenomenon of the mid-life crises amongst men has quite the documentation all throughout history with overconfidence in landing a woman serving as one of the leading symptoms. It leaves these men yearning for a time of freedom as now their kids take up most of it along with sexual liberation their wives do not fulfill. Giving these two the opportunity to get all of this out of their system for a week operates on some ridiculously flawed psychology the film brings up and somewhat mocks at the same time. This situation, however, does present an interesting social experiment leading to quite the average final product.
As you can expect with this film operating as a comedy, the journey for these men to get laid comes with its challenges as they don’t really know how to meet women anymore. This harkens back to my own personal trouble in helping others find their person. The only advice I can give is to find the love of your life at 18 while at college and marry them. I have no real tangible advice I can give to someone out in the dating world. Rick and Fred find themselves in the same situation where they have been out of the single market for so long they have no idea how to navigate within it any longer. They try a local bar and strike out and several other venues and seemingly have no luck, which only solidifies that these two should really be counting their lucky stars their wives still love them.
As expected with a feature directed by Peter and Bobby Farrelly, much of the humor employed in the feature scrapes the very bottom of the barrel pulling up much of nothing. Filled with juvenile jokes where most of them do not land, this film really struggles in advancing the story effectively leading to the very obvious conclusion. One of those instances where they elect to go with the most obvious joke in every situation, which really limits the potential of what could have been explored through this narrative. Instead, you get the same old junk you would see in something like Dumb and Dumber but with a bit more seriousness this time as it deals with more adult themes.
Switching over to Rick and Fred’s wives makes for more entertaining sequences. Maggie (Jenna Fischer) and Grace (Christina Applegate) prove women would have no problem utilizing this hall pass as demonstrated through the narrative. They decide to have one themselves especially because they granted one to their husbands. Everything happening with them completely outdoes the juvenile nonsense with the men. In Maggie’s case, she must deflect away the advances of a smooth-talking Rick Coleman (Bruce Thomas) as Grace gets the attention of a young and attractive college baseball player named Gerry (Tyler Hoechlin). Each presenting their own problems, they learn their own lessons throughout this process much like their husbands.
Average at best even with an interesting concept at its center, Hall Pass has some fun elements to it but definitely struggles in maintaining its comedy throughout its runtime. The film hits all of the gags it can but can only sustain so much that it runs out of steam and starts delivering some weak comedy. It allows us to see once again that having a good marriage beats going back out to the single world even if one has a much more routine and repetitive nature to it. The grass is not always greener.
Films with Josh 
