Film Review: Hall Pass

Of all the people that piqued my interest in seeing Hall Pass, it was legendary author Bret Easton Ellis. Proclaiming it the funniest movie of the year on his Twitter account was probably an exaggeration, and while it comes over like a Hangover wannabe, it does walk all over the sequel to that film.

Fed up by their husbands increasingly erratic and sex obsessed behaviour, Maggie (Jenna Fischer) and Grace (Christina Applegate) decide to give Rick (Owen Wilson) and Fred (Jason Sudeikis) a 'Hall Pass', which is essentially a week off from marriage so they can get everything out of their systems, with zero guilt. The wives leave to see relatives, and while they start to have a blast, the guys are struggling to recapture their youth...

Directed by The Farrelly Brothers, known for hits like Dumb And Dumber and There's Something About Mary, you can expect some gross out moments and some heart, which is what Hall Pass delivers, even though it's nowhere near as good.

The cast are all likable enough, and there are some good (albeit unlikely) appearances from Richard Jenkins as a hardened partying god, and Stephen Merchant as one of Rick and Fred's buddies. Merchant also gets one of the more amusing moments in the film, during a bizarre post credits sequence, which is almost at odds with the rest of the movie!

The film does start to drag unfortunately, as it drifts past the 90 minute mark, it does struggle to hold the interest, and even for a Farrelly Brothers film, it does get, well...dumb and dumber. And not in a good way, just in a really silly way, which didn't really do it for me. It seemed to be trying to hard to be out there and wacky.

Overall though, Hall Pass is a decent enough watch, and while it doesn't reach the heights of...well anything the cast and film makers have done before, it's all watchable enough and has just enough laughs to get you through the films slightly bloated running time.

***
A mildly amusing comedy, with some heart too. But it's nothing amazing, and it's a bit too long. Worth a rental, perhaps.