Releasing Studio: Warner Bros./New Line Cinema
Disc/Transfer Specifications: Anamorphic Widescreen 2.40:1; Region 1 (U.S.) Release
Tested Audio Track: English Dolby Digital 5.1
Rating: N/A
Director: Peter & Bobby Farrelly
Starring Cast: Owen Wilson, Jason Sudeikis, Jenna Fischer, Christina Applegate, Richard Jenkins
PEARL’S PLOT ANALYSIS:
Although not credited in my Starring Cast colossus above, the annoyingly untalented Joy Behar – of her self-titled
Joy Behar Show -- is in this too, playing a buffer of sorts between two younger wives that are contemplating giving their husbands a week off from marriage, hence the title of this Farrelly brothers film. Behar has the kind of irritating voice and know-it-all attitude that makes you want to smash her face in with a bronzed
Oscar trophy if you were to have the misfortune of sitting opposite her during an interview. That said, thankfully, she has a few odd lines here that feel more like a piece of her “journalism” that was tacked on rather than a flowing part of the film.
The few trailers I saw for
Hall Pass made it seem like a must-see – almost like the
40 Year Old Virgin for 2011…a gut-busting comedy that had a group of stereotypical misfit husbands piling into a local Applebee’s to pick up chicks in addition to the mere inclusion of the hysterical “Leon” from HBO’s groundbreaking sitcom
Curb Your Enthusiasm. I was stoked. The final result, as always, was just disappointing – not horribly so, but the clichéd themes on display here by the usually spot-on Farrellys stopped this from being a true comical potboiler in the religion of
40 Year Old Virgin, Forgetting Sara Marshall, Couples Retreat, The Break Up and
Knocked Up. Beyond that, there’s just a ton – and I mean ton – of hypocrisy going on in the narrative, as we’re forced to believe that men can’t stick their wing dings in anything wearing a skirt, but it’s okay that wives cheat on them with 19 year-old college jock douches and don’t have to even admit it. I’ll get to that.
The annoyingly popular Owen Wilson (who appears to be in just about everything now, although exactly why is still a head scratcher to me, as this guy can’t act nor is he easy to look at…someone needs to give him the number of the nose job doctor Barbara Streisand was referred to) is a comb-over-hairstyle geek of a husband, wearing plaid shirts with mismatching ties, living in suburbia with his cute wife and the prerequisite kids; Jason Sudeikis is his friend and is the same kind of nerdy, clueless nitwit, married to the still-sexy Christina Applegate. If you get the frustrating feeling – and you will, as I did – that guys like this would
never have remotely good looking wives in real life as is portrayed in
Hall Pass, this sensation will continue throughout the entire time you watch it. I just don’t get it. In reality, a chick like Applegate wouldn’t give Sudeikis the time of day passing him on the street – but it gets worse than this; wait until some really uber-sexy Australian tight-bodied blonde begins wanting Wilson’s geeky character…right up until the moment she pulls the top of her dress down in an empty bedroom during a party, her fun bags bobbling right in his face. I simply shook my head in disbelief at just how far directors in Hollywood will go to make implausible scenarios. Wilson and Sudeikis are complete cooter hounds – their heads snapping around every time a chick with a nice *** passes by even when they’re walking with their wives; I mean, how many of us have done this routinely, right guys? That twat with the high heels and short sundress on walking by, her designer Gucci handbag clutched tight, the smell of her perfume driving us mad, all the while also looking at the six-foot-eight tattooed and muscled goon that’s with her…still, we cannot help ourselves but to check out her ***. I suppose
Hall Pass explores this scenario with as much dignity as it can muster, but the end result, as I said, was just all wrong.
The beginning of the film is spent portraying the wives constantly *****ing about their husbands and their inability to focus on them as wives, yadda yadda yadda – you know, the suburban housewife complaint syndrome, while the boys spend their days in a local coffee house staring at a stunningly gorgeous blonde Australian girl behind the counter. After the wives have a chat with a local older friend of theirs during a power walk session around the neighborhood (Joy Behar), they decide to give the husbands a “hall pass” – which equates to a week off from marriage. During this time, they can screw, hit on or otherwise flirt with any piece of tail they want. But – the underlying question is…does this apply to the ladies? There has always been, in our society, some kind of double standard when it comes to this – if guys go out without the wives and hit on chicks there is always the parallel universe in which the wives are living, which then gives them the burning desire to go buck wild and hunt for young, muscled, tanned flesh that they can ride like Seabiscuit under the sheets…but for some reason, the ladies go nuttier than the boys, and don’t have to justify it whatsoever. Thus lies the unavoidable second half of
Hall Pass involving Applegate and Sudeikis’ characters.
Sudeikis and Wilson take a couple of other losers in their testosterone circle – the aforementioned star of the next-to-the-last season of
Curb Your Enthusiasm plus a British-accented pencil necked geek and the prerequisite fat slob – on the hall pass endeavor, first stopping at a local Applebee’s, but they’re so clueless, they actually think this is a place to pick up women. After stuffing their faces with wings and other sloppy crap, the group is still on the hunt for poontang, and their search takes them into comical situations involving various “meet markets” that are really nothing of the sort. Meanwhile, the wives get involved in attending a baseball game of some kind, in which they meet a couple of guys that are giving them the twitch down below, if you get my drift – and indeed, if the husbands have a week off from marriage, why can’t they? Wilson’s wife is swooned by one of the older coaches of one of the teams, while Applegate gets the hots for a college aged guy much younger than she. The college kid wants to bang the older hot cougar in his eyes, while the older coach wants to seduce Wilson’s wife with wine, a roaring fireplace and soft touches. The situation with Wilson’s wife doesn’t manifest further than that for all intents and purposes – but Applegate, in a drunken frenzy, sleeps with the college kid at a motel room no less, immediately having regrets afterwards. It seems her character simply couldn’t resist the charms of this kid’s six-pack chiseled stomach and pumped up arms, and age or marriage be damned, she was gonna ride that pony for all he was worth. What a complete whore.
Back with the boys, Wilson is hatching a plan to get with the gorgeous blonde at the coffee shop, and the flirting eventually leads to a “gym date” which then spirals into him running into her at a nightclub. My G-d, is this chick smokin’ hot – she’s gyrating on the dancefloor, the dress she’s wearing showing off all her curves, while continuing to return the flirts with Wilson. The whole thing, though, just doesn’t make sense; in reality, Wilson’s ugly, geeky married man representation would never have a prayer with a hot girl like this. Yet here they are in a club, the chick getting closer and closer to “inappropriate boundary breaking.” Eventually, the two of them end up in an empty bedroom in the house of an older coonhound friend of Wilson’s, who is throwing an after party of sorts with some club attendees. When the blonde drops the top of her dress, exposing her gorgeous, perfect melons to Wilson, he comes to the realization that he cannot go through with this affair – the blonde informs him that he is going to regret this the rest of his life (how much she loves herself, indeed) but like every stereotypical script of this nature, the man just cannot go through with doing this to his wife.
CONTINUED BELOW...
