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| Hall Pass |
Reviewed by Adam Minor
The Farrelly brothers pretty much owned the 90s. Providing cinema with risqué comedy that shocked and awed the audience. Unfortunately, they’ve never adapted to the trend in Hollywood. Their latest instalment, Hall Pass takes another stab at being surprising. Instead of shock and awe, however, Hall Pass is just shockingly awful.
The casting choices had filled me with excitement since I first heard about this project. SNL’s funniest cast member, Jason Sudeikis and constant funny man Owen Wilson spearhead this raunchy tale of two guys given a “hall pass” or a week off from marriage to engage in sexual romps with anyone they wish. Add in The Office’s sweet Jenna Fischer, Anchorman’s confident Christina Applegate, Ricky Gervais’ equally funny sidekick Stephen Merchant with a side of the always funny and talented Richard Jenkins, and you have the makings of a brilliant comedy.
Where this film fails is that the Farrelly brothers still think that graphic nudity and scatological humor is funny and surprising to today’s audiences. In a world where we get a new, grotesque Saw movie every October, and full frontal male nudity every other week, the devices used in their movies seem tame these days.
As always, the Farrelly brothers try to tie their film into some sort of real-world humanity and take it to a level where lessons are learned. They’ve been mildly successful in some of their films of making this transition, but in Hall Pass, the point is lost amidst the absurdity of the comedy.
I don’t believe that films from the Farrellys are completely on the brink of extinction, but they should definitely reassess the current state of comedy in cinema and reassess their game plan. They were once the forerunners of comedy, but now they’re left standing behind everyone else. Which, in a movie like Hall Pass, is a dangerous place to be.
Rating: 1/5
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