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We’ve all seen plenty of outrageous comedies about nerdy teenage boys on the prowl, desperate to get laid. They pull out all the stops, using every bad pick-up line in the book, awkwardly bumbling their way through each step of the way. When the main characters are well-meaning but greatly misguided teenagers (like Christopher Mintz-Plasse’s Fogell in Superbad, for instance), it can be funny—and even lovable. But when those nerdy guys on the prowl are grown-up insurance salesmen and real estate agents—as in the Farrelly Brothers’ Hall Pass—then it’s just kinda sad.
Though Rick (Owen Wilson) and Fred (Jason Sudeikis) are both happily-married family men, they just can’t seem to keep their eyes (or their minds) from wandering. After their obsession with boobs and butts gets out of hand, their wives (Jenna Fischer and Christina Applegate) decide to give them a hall pass—a week-long, no-questions-asked vacation from their marriage—to help them get it all out of their system.
Thrilled by the possibility of sleeping with gorgeous women for an entire week, Rick and Fred hit the local hot spots, only to find that they’re not quite the smooth-talking babe magnets that they imagined themselves to be. Meanwhile, their wives decide that they deserve a week off, too—and they spend it on the beach with a minor league baseball team.
Hall Pass is divided into two very different movies. On one hand, you have the wives—two mature, grown women who spend a week wrestling with some issues in their marriages while, at the same time, getting the opportunity to remember what it’s like to be a woman, as opposed to just a wife and a mother. Theirs is a pretty interesting story, with likable characters that you can understand and relate to—and, for that reason, it gets very little attention. It’s simply an aside to the film’s true comedic insanity.
While the women are real characters, the men are nothing but caricatures—awkward, horny, and totally superficial teenagers in Dockers-and-Hawaiian-shirt-clad bodies. Left to their own devices, they do what any man-boy cliché would: they eat too much, they drink too much, and they generally make complete fools of themselves.
For a while, it’s mildly entertaining—especially when Rick and Fred are joined by their jealous buddies, who get to let loose a little while living vicariously through the guys with the prized hall passes. When they all go golfing at a fancy country club and end up stoned on special brownies, their outrageous antics are good for some low-brow laughs. But then the friends disappear, leaving just Rick and Fred, who spend way too much time doing way too little. The story drags through drunken club encounters and bad pick-up lines until their old friend, Coakley (played by an almost unrecognizable Richard Jenkins), gets the story back on track.
Though Hall Pass does have some funny moments, the juvenile adventures of these two family guys on the prowl are mostly just plain sad. At their age, they should know better. They should know that their pick-up lines are stupid. They should know that Applebee’s isn’t the place to pick up hot young chicks. They should know not to wear Dockers and Hawaiian shirts to a hip club. Of course, they learn their valuable lessons in the end—but they learn them about 20 years too late. And that makes Hall Pass a pretty depressing comedy.
Blu-ray Review:
The Blu-ray release of Hall Pass is pretty short on features. Though it includes both the theatrical version and the extended cut (which which is six minutes longer than the original), you won’t find a whole lot of other extras.
The special features menu includes just two options: a gag reel (which, as Jenna Fischer comments, includes a whole lot of Fischer and Christina Applegate standing around, waiting for planes to pass over) and a lengthy extended scene, featuring a whole lot more of Richard Jenkins.
If you have a few extra minutes after watching the movie, you probably don’t need to bother with the gag reel, but the deleted scene is worth checking out.
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