In school, a hall pass usually meant a trip to the restroom. “Hall Pass,” the movie, also means a trip to the toilet – to flush this inane excuse for a comedy so it never sees the light of day.
There is so much wrong with this latest flop from the directing team of Bobby Farrelly and Peter Farrelly, it’s easier to list what’s right: nothing.
Although the list is endless, here are a few lowlights from this miserable mess.
Let’s start with the concept. Two guys who couldn’t get lucky in a women’s prison for the blind Rick (Owen Wilson) and Fred (Jason Sudeikis) are given a hall pass from their marriages for a week. They are free to do anything they want.
It should come as no shock that the script was written by men – the Farrelly brothers and Pete Jones.
Because this kind of plotline only exists in bad buddy sitcoms and letters to Penthouse magazine. You can almost hear the beer drinking and gas passing as the story unfolds.
The idea might work if the script included at least one original joke. At one point, the hall-pass husbands and their three moronic friend get high eating marijuana-filled brownies. That gag is so old it gets a monthly Social Security check.
Then there’s a joke about self gratification. If you can’t come up with an idea that’s better than “American Pie,” don’t even go there.
It’s as if every joke was written by a 12-year-old boy who just saw his first dirty magazine. There are efforts to get laughs out of long shots of male genitalia, explosive diarrhea and a man using a golf course sand trap like a litter box.
The “laughs” are delivered by a cast that seems more concerned with collecting a paycheck than turning in an iota of acting. Wilson is bland, Sudeikis’ performance was amateurish, Jenna Fischer’s lost, and Christina Applegate looks desperate.
Richard Jenkins has the only interesting role as an aging gigolo, but he looks as though he agreed to be in the movie because of some sort of community service requirement. As if the lame jokes and pathetic characters weren’t bad enough, there’s blatant product placement in “Hall Pass.” Applebee’s, Five Guys and McDonald’s get plugs. The worst is a Coke truck parked outside a hospital emergency room at 4 a.m. There was a time with the 1998 movie “There’s Something About Mary” when the Farrelly brothers showed a great knack at being maverick comedy directors. Since then their careers have circled the toilet with “Stuck on You,” “Fever Pitch” and this latest disaster.
It’s time to give the brothers a hall pass from directing.
Grade: F.